A Spiritual Diet for the New Year

Ram Dass speaks of offering this prayer of sacrifice before each meal.

First comes the understanding that my food is actually Spirit, or as he says, Brahman, and not the matter that my mind has come to think of it.

Second comes the understanding that I am feeding it to the fire (desire) of hunger which is Spirit also.

Third is the recognition that I am actually not feeding it into the fire, but Spirit feeds the fire.

Lastly is the understanding that the food is an offering for Spirit.

Hence, Spirit is feeding Spirit to the fires of Spirit in an offering to Spirit.

In other words, nothing is happening at all. For all is illusion.

No one is eating anything: this may be the best diet program ever!

Instant Karmic Enlightenment

I think Ram Dass (in 'Paths of God') has some important things to say concerning Jnana Yoga which are very translatable towards the Neo-advaita way or non-way, and what some call its fast food servicing of enlightenment.

The first thing is a general statement concerning intellectual spiritual practices in the west, that “we are coming out of a kind of sickness here... in the way in which we have overthought” so that “we have been intellectually way ahead of our hearts’ and bodies’ wisdom.”

I think this should serve great warning to any intellectual spiritual practice, and something that has made me stop and... think?

The second thing concerns Ramana’s practice of Self-Inquiry. He calls it a “beautiful method—if you can stand it!” Furthermore, he says, it’s a practice “that takes incredible intellectual discipline” and “the fiercest gyan method I know.”

Now, I see this as no critique of Self-Inquiry, but possibly a consideration concerning any method involving something like Instant Karmic Enlightenment.

I myself have benefited from both Sailor Bob’s method and Ramana’s practice. There have been times when I’ve known here and now what I am. But I have not yet experienced a carse-like disassociative new world order.

I’ve experienced moments. And I understand on an intellectual level. But this body-mind mechanism still feels separate most of the time, even though I know it isn’t.

So for me, these Ram Dass comments strike exactly to the heart of things.

Ram Dass and the Art of Karma Yoga

And today I read this, which in many ways states in other words what I've called the art of lucid dreaming.

So the karma yogi is the person who uses his or her life to come to God by listening for the dharmic act, acting without attachment to the outcome, all the while knowing she or he's not the actor, anyway. That’s the whole formula for turning our lives around and making them our spiritual practice.

Ram Dass in ‘Paths to God’

The listening is Attention; the acting is Guidance; and the knowing is Surrender.

So what that this was said more than thirty years ago. Actually it was said more than three thousand years ago.

Really it was never said, and there was no audience there to hear it.