Maharajji told me, 'Give up anger and I'll help you.' I found _x000D_ that love freed me back into the ocean of love and my righteous anger didn't do that. And I would rather be free than right.
Ram DassRead
In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The ability to perceive deeper truths depends on one's personal readiness to understand them.
In this quote, Ram Dass emphasizes that the distinction between esoteric (inner, hidden) and exoteric (outer, accessible) knowledge lies within the individual's readiness to perceive and comprehend such truths. He suggests that experiences or insights not being clear to someone shouldn't be attributed to a lack of information but rather to their own capacity to recognize and absorb those insights, highlighting the importance of personal growth and openness in the pursuit of understanding.
Themes
PerceptionReadyUnderstandingWisdomKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop about personal growth, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of openness to learn.
More from Ram Dass
All quotes →The gift you offer another person is just your being.
Ram DassRead
Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul.
Ram DassRead
You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.
Ram DassRead
The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. _x000D_ _x000D_ In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. _x000D_ _x000D_ When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.
Ram DassRead
When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.
Ram DassRead
Similar quotes
For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal-this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.
George EliotRead
Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
Karl MarxRead
Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.
David BowieRead
The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.
Lady GagaRead
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Harper LeeRead
Don't be agnostic - be something.
Robert FrostRead