04/01/2023
graphic:
Where you finally see the beloved is in another human being, another soul. I look at all of you, and you are all souls to me, and you are all so beautiful. I mean, each person’s struggle, each person’s journey is so exquisite, I can hardly catch my breath when I just let myself stop for a moment and appreciate. It is so precious.
I walk down the street, often in ecstasy. I’m just looking at so much beauty, I can hardly bear it, and most people have no idea they’re beautiful. They’re busy being not beautiful, because they’re thinking, “If only I had this or if only this, or if only that… then I’d be beautiful.” And who they are, and their pain and their beauty and all of it, is so preciously beautiful. It’s just like the beloved is being offered to you again and again.
This is something you can practice. But you’ve got to understand that your ability to see the soul and subtlety inside of another person is in part dependent on your ability to acknowledge it in yourself. If you’re busy just being somebody looking for it in somebody else, you’ll only see what the looked can see. It takes one to know one, is the way to say it.
And when you have the chance to stand somewhere where nobody’s watching you, and you can just look at people… I spend lots of time doing that. Like, I’ll sit in a car on a street and watch people go by. I’ll just look at each one as somebody who is an absolutely exquisitely articulated entity unfolding before my eyes. Then they walk off, never to be seen again probably.
…And they’re all me, and I realize that when compassion is fully developed, you’re not looking at somebody as them, you’re experiencing it through feeling. You’re letting that intuitive part merge with the other person, and you’re feeling their pain, or their joy, or their hope, or their fear. These are things you can practice in your relationships with other human beings.
- Ram Dass
