I have much to share since spending five days at a retreat with Ram Dass on Maui. This retreat was nothing like I’d ever experienced, with daily sessions with Buddhist meditation master, Jack Kornfield, followed by sessions with Ram Dass sharing his spiritual wisdom to over 300 participants. Each evening following dinner, we spent two hours chanting and singing kirtan with Krishna Das and his band. Wow! Five days and nights of absolute heart-centered practices and question\/answers with Ram Dass’ satsang who included Krishna Das, Rameshwar Das, Raghu Markus, and Mirabai Bush…those who shared time with their guru, Maharaj-ji and Ram Dass in India in the late 1960s-70s. <\/p>\n
I plan on updating my website to include a completely new section that will be devoted to Spiritual Growth. This blog will also continue to focus on various aspects of our spiritual evolution.<\/p>\n
When we contemplate the question, “Who am I?” we find that our search to find out who we are can be facilitated by a commitment to living a life of mindfulness. Jack Kornfield informs us that if we are to enter the community of spiritual seekers, we do so by living our outer life as one of respect and our inner life is lived as one of attention. That respect in our outer lives is to respect all human beings, because they are the same as we are. We respect the earth and all its creatures because of our interconnection. Living our inner life with awareness means that we focus our awareness on the now so that we can be fully present for each interaction that we have or each moment in our lives. We are aware of the constant movement of the psyche that is ever changing…but we do not cling. Awareness means that we are aware of when we cling to expected outcomes for those things we pursue. It is not that our desires are to be discarded or that we blame ourselves for wanting things to turn out in a particular a way, but that we cling to the sadness or disappointment when our needs or desires are NOT met. Is it possible for us to live a conscious life, focused on that which “is”…just that…What Is.<\/p>\n
As humans, we tend to apply stories to whatever happens, clouding our awareness with pain or anger from the past or distorting with our fears of the future. When we can come back to our heart and rest in pure loving awareness in our hearts, remaining in the light of pure awareness, without judgment or longing, this allows us to be in the here and now…not in the future of “later” or the past with “then”, but NOW. Living our outer life with respect for all and our inner life with awareness of our human tendencies to “make up stories” about what is happening will bring us Home to our heart. ~ Namaste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have much to share since spending five days at a retreat with Ram Dass on Maui. This retreat was nothing like I’d ever experienced, with daily sessions with Buddhist meditation master, Jack Kornfield, followed by sessions with Ram Dass sharing his spiritual wisdom to over 300 participants. Each evening following dinner, we spent two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wuchicreations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}