"...and best of all is surrender, which soon brings peace."

Prayer is the essential aspect that I have been missing in my practice. After all, what exactly am I practicing for? Without prayer, this practice is devoid of, outside, and separate from the divine; it's an ego echo chamber, a dark telescope, the devil's own chain. Again and again the shadow whispers poison, the ego self-aggrandizes, and the broken soul desperately longs for the next spiritual fix.

Prayer, as I have been learning, is more then just a place of communion with the divine, but instead the earnest quality of seeking that out. It's a place where surrender and love truly emerge, a cup overflowing with gratitude and grace. I've recently been discovering new qualities about grace, how grace is like a womb of love in which we are submerged. Being loved exactly as we are, regardless of mistakes, flaws, achievements, qualities, or skill. Completely unconditional. Completely constant.

So I'm playing this new edge where every practice becomes a prayer, a way to open up and recognize how grace surrounds me, guides me, and holds me. A way to step outside of my own mind and orient with something higher, brighter, and kinder than my own ego-projections. Maybe with practice I can remain mindful enough to dedicate all of my actions to the holy spirit, the immanent life-force, the compassionate, the terrible. What a blessing to behold!

Meditate on the Guide,
the Giver of all, the Primordial
Poet, smaller than an atom,
unthinkable, brilliant as the sun.
~Bhagavad Gita, 8.9

I was stunned

[In the late 1970s, Rachel, a young girl of eleven, was kidnapped, raped, beaten and murdered. Ram Dass wrote the following letter to her parents...]

Dear Steve and Anita,

Rachel finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.

I can't assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Rachel's legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love as God loves.

Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel, and thank her for being with you these few years, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why this had to be the way it was.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts – if we can keep them open to God – will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love, include me.

In love,
Ram Dass