Ram Dass Was Right When He Said This

The spiritual world is less "measurable" than the physical one. While we're equipped with the intuition, and different abilities to help us navigate the spiritual realms - we're still living in a world that comes with its stress, challenges, propaganda; which interferes with our spiritual "antennas."

We're courageous when it comes to our spiritual growth. We read books, we learn from different teachers, we reflect on our experiences, we apply and try to implement as best as we can the different spiritual teachings we come across, and we're patient during dark times.

This whole journey made us wiser, more compassionate and amazed by the beauty of life, Nature, and the universe. While such "above-average" experiences open us to a whole new dimension of existence - which makes it easier for us to grasp the essence behind most spiritual teachings - we're quick to discover that people still irritate us, that we still carry triggers from our past, and that at times, we don't act so spiritually.

Such realizations tend to make us feel like despite all our long and tedious inner work, we didn't make much progress. Seeing the "facts" makes us beat ourselves down, and even believe we're back to square one and that there's no hope for us. While realizing we're still a "work in progress" can be discouraging - the truth is that it's one of the most liberating step on the spiritual path.

The quicker we are to understand that we've got work to do - the humbler we get - and the more open we become to learning.

Daily meditation, reading and preaching spiritual teachings, spreading quotes from different teachers all around our home - makes it easy for us to identify as a spiritual person.

When we're identified with a race or a culture, we feel the necessity to protect the object of our identification. The same can be said about identifying as a spiritual person.

When we call ourselves "spiritual," we must call others something else. This emphasis on our spirituality naturally separates us from what is around us. Wherever we go, whoever we are with - we feel the need to appear as a "spiritual" person, we're eager to share our spiritual opinions, we want to prove to others that we're standing on a spiritual ground.

Unfortunately, identification makes us more dense. And whenever density is involved - we collide with everything around us. That's why there's so much war, discrimination, and division in the world. Everyone is identified with whatever they believe in, and that identification requires people to fight for their psychological survival.

Coming back to our subject; when we identify as a spiritual person, the division that follows, with our "less" spiritual companions, makes it obvious again that despite our spirituality - our siblings, parents, friends; close relatives still make us react in the same ways we did.

That's when a saying from Ram Dass comes to mind:

"If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family."

- Ram Dass

The people we've known for the longest time, those we call our family - whether it's our literal family, or best friends, mentors, spouse - are the ones we have the most assumptions about. Because we've spent so much time together, we made conclusions about them  -  and those conclusions created an image in our mind, one that we bring up whenever we interact with them.

When we're interacting with a person we've known for some time, we're not truly interacting with them but rather, the image we have about them, and the image they have about us  -  interact together.

These images are the different experiences we shared together; the resulting assumptions/conclusions we made about each other  -  which prevents a genuine relationship from happening.

The more familiar we are with a person, the more defined our position regarding that person is.

This is especially visible with parents, siblings, longtime friends. If little brother used to follow us wherever we went as an example, we assumed that he'll keep doing it for the rest of our lives together. During childhood, our brainwaves are slower, so we absorb beliefs much faster. And that assumption makes us take the "superior" position, one in which we always feel in power against little brother. But little brother is a living entity, and by growing up he changes, and that change creates newer patterns in our relationship - which we try to deal with by using an outdated software that is our past experience together.

The opposite is also true; the newer our link with someone is - meaning when we first meet them - the more open, and accepting we are about them. This is especially visible when we meet new people, or date, and how we try so hard to impress them. What would usually irritate us passes without a sound. Until we become familiar with the person, and start to argue, once again.

This battle between images is the source of real-world conflicts. Whether it's at a religious scale, an international scale, a galactic scale, an intimate scale - it's all the same division being projected by a confused mind. We create assumptions about others, they do the same - and conflict occurs.

These dynamics in our relationships may sound alarming, but for anyone who's on a spiritual journey  -  it's probably the best opportunity for maximum growth in the shortest amount of time.

If we're attentive enough, and pay attention to all the details, observing how we think/feel/react internally during our interactions with people  -  we have the most chances to "see" these patterns within ourselves  -  and in coming face to face with them; we understand ourselves, dissolve the unhealthy dynamic and evolve to a broader level of awareness.

The universe is our most supportive friend when it comes to our evolution. It put us close to our best teachers, those very people that make us lose our "spiritual temperament" with only a few words.

If we understand how we form images in our relationships, how these images interact with each other, how these images make us assume things about people, and how those assumptions create expectations, which create hopes, worries and suffering. If we see how, through our assumptions, we prevent a genuine connection with others, and how that prevention generates more and more division in the world  -  we realize that we created the world as we know it today from within ourselves, and that by understanding ourselves, "Know Thyself" -  we heal our world.