Life is often complicated and\u00a0frightening for a lot of us. More so since we\u2019re experiencing a three year pandemic\u00a0that is still confusing and challenging. As we look for patience and courage to\u00a0get through a day, guidance from the late spiritual teacher\/psychologist Baba
Ram Dass, is a good place to turn. His brilliant legacy stems from how he\u00a0selflessly offered us his lifetime of knowledge that he gained from relentless\u00a0personal investigation. His teachings go on after his death as he gave us a comforting\u00a0idea to help us along the path of life:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all just walking each other\u00a0home.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his book of the same name, these\u00a0words carry a certain kind of ease, a reminder to accept the human condition as it is while we alternately stumble and soar towards the unknown. He encourages
us to find all of who we are at the deepest and most profound level which\u00a0allows us to see how much we all need each other.<\/p>\n
In order to preserve his teachings\u00a0and those of his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, he created the \u201cLove. Serve. Remember\u201d\u00a0Foundation. When I consider this small trio of powerful words, I\u2019m inspired to
look deeper inside myself to see what each one means to me.<\/p>\n
Love:<\/p>\n
If we can manage our self-hatred\u00a0and find self-love, that frees us up to find ways to show each other we care by\u00a0giving and receiving. It\u2019s challenging to break old patterns of self-loathing\u00a0and blame but when we do, love fills the void. It doesn’t cost us anything and\u00a0it gives us everything. Ram Dass said, \u201cLove has to spring spontaneously from\u00a0within. It is no way at the effect of any form of inner or outer force. Love\u00a0and coercion can never go together. Love cannot be forced on anyone but it can\u00a0be awakened through love itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Serve:<\/p>\n
The concept of service is often\u00a0misunderstood. Serving someone is not an extraordinary act. It\u2019s natural, it\u2019s\u00a0human, and it\u2019s not worthy of a medal or a gold star. We do it because we care\u00a0about other people, we want them to care about us, and as a result, it becomes
a mutual healing experience. If you think of serving someone as a way to\u00a0aggrandize yourself, you\u2019re looking in the wrong direction for the wrong\u00a0reasons, and you end up feeling empty and disappointed. When you think of\u00a0serving someone as a way to make their life a little bit easier, you bless your\u00a0own life with fullness and satisfaction. I\u2019m not suggesting you put yourself on\u00a0the back burner. Serving someone includes you, but there is a difference\u00a0between healthy and unhealthy ways to be with yourself.<\/p>\n
Being of service is a way to stop\u00a0thinking about and obsessing over personal problems. You know those old mind\u00a0loops that make you crazy. It\u2019s helpful to look beyond ourselves and offer what\u00a0is needed when we can. Mahatma Gandhi said, \u201cThe best way to lose yourself is\u00a0to serve others.\u201d He believed that understanding the needs of others is an\u00a0important step on the journey of self-discovery. I don\u2019t think he was\u00a0suggesting that you don\u2019t take care of yourself. I believe he was suggesting:\u00a0Serve someone, serve yourself.<\/p>\n
Remember:<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the pandemic\u00a0when we were completely isolated, I began to think about what had shaped me and\u00a0made me who I am today. I walked from room to room, gazing at various objects\u00a0in my home: a pair of pink pointe shoes, a drawer filled with old poetry
journals, a wooden Buddha I brought back from the far east when I was studying\u00a0with the Philippine healers. I held each of these objects in my hands, closed\u00a0my eyes and let them speak to me. They all had memories attached, some good\u00a0ones and others not so good, but each of them represented a different phase of\u00a0my life and they sparked invaluable memories.<\/p>\n
As writers, we use our memories of small\u00a0details to make a story come alive. What was he wearing? How did her voice\u00a0sound? A woman who had lost her husband was upset because she was losing her\u00a0memory of him. I asked her to describe him. As she recalled the details of how\u00a0he looked, how he dressed and how his voice sounded, she began to get a clear\u00a0picture of him and their life together, the joy and the pain, the scars and the\u00a0healing. She decided to paint his image so she would never forget.<\/p>\n
Novelist,
Stephen King, says, \u201cArt consists of the presence of memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always helpful to go back to\u00a0our spiritual roots which are uncomplicated and accessible. When we review the\u00a0simple things, the basic ideas that make up the foundation of our continuing
journey, we drop into the ease of familiarity, a lightness that soothes our\u00a0souls, and a way to rise above our day to day dilemmas to discover who we are,\u00a0what we dream about and who we love.<\/p>\n
Lao Tzu said, \u201cBeing deeply lovedby someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life is often complicated and\u00a0frightening for a lot of us. More so since we\u2019re experiencing a three year pandemic\u00a0that is still confusing and challenging. As we look for patience and courage to\u00a0get through a day, guidance from the late spiritual teacher\/psychologist BabaRam Dass, is a good place to turn. His brilliant legacy stems from how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2337,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions\/2337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}