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
After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Self-reflection through meditation can lead to a clearer understanding of one’s behaviors and inner struggles.
This quote by Ram Dass emphasizes the transformative power of meditation and self-awareness. As one learns to quiet the mind, they become more attuned to their habitual patterns, including procrastination and resistance to life's challenges. By cultivating a state of observation or 'the witness,' individuals can witness changes in their lives without forcing them, allowing for natural personal growth and understanding.
Themes
MeditationSelf-AwarenessBehaviorInner-DialogueResistance
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-reflection.
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
We tend to use knowledge as therapy.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
Robert W. ServiceRead
A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.
Richard J. FosterRead
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business.
Warren BuffettRead
Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.
Marian Wright EdelmanRead
If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
ZhuangziRead