02/16/2022
Art: .n.roses
The quieter you become inside, the more you will pull back a little and remove yourself from the reactive mode that you are in. We all are in reactive modes with each other; I mean, we all have these incredible stories to play out. The quieter we become inside, the more we get established in that witness or the soul.
As you develop this quiet place inside from which you see the unfolding of your life story, you begin to understand how your ego identity is made up of your participation in the web, in a kind of horizontal web that involves your roles and all of your reference groups. They help define your identity.
I used to have a motorcycle at one point, and I also had a Mercedes. This is when I was being a young professor in 1958. The idea was when you rode the motorcycle you put on a black jacket and you look tough. When you rode in the Mercedes you put on a houndstooth jacket and you put your pipe in your pocket, and you had a cap, and you looked aloof. I mean, there were certain clear role definitions. What I used to do was, just for fun, I’d ride my motorcycle with my houndstooth jacket and my pipe, and I’d go to the Mercedes club of America meetings in my boots and leather jacket. They’d hate me because I wasn’t playing the game properly.
As you’re quiet and you listen in, you see that when you push against fulfilling your roles there’s a lot of energy involved, and when you get lost in them there’s also a lot of energy involved, so there is an art form in learning how to be a participant in a system of life and honor it.
- Ram Dass
