Welcome to the Commian podcast. My name is Jeff Krasnow. This is our meditation practice series,

and today your guide is none other than the legendary Ram Dass. when Ram Dass first went to India in 1967, he was still a nice little Jewish boy.

In fact, his name was Dr. Richard Albert, and he was a prominent Harvard psychologist and

psychedelic pioneer, along with his fellow adventurer Timothy Leary.

Now, he was brought to India by Bhagabandas, and there he met his guru, Niem Kharoli Baba,

who introduced him to Bhakti yoga, also known as devotional yoga.

And it was there that Neme Kuroli Baba gave Albertpert his Hindu name Ram Dass, which means servant of God.

Now, Bhakti Yoga has a lot of practices associated with it, but it's often associated with a single pointedness of mind focused on love.

Pretty cool. So he returned from India and a couple years later, Ram Dass published

his seminal work titled Be Here Now in 1971. And that subsequently became really the definitive

Western book on spirituality, yoga, and meditation for all of the hippies in the early 70s.

So every day, we are swamped by the fire hose of thoughts that Spigot rarely turns off.

But really, thoughts are simply phenomenon, like sounds and sights and tastes and emotions and feelings,

arising and subsiding in consciousness. However, we tend to identify with our thoughts and fixate on them.

And this misperception can really lead to a lot of suffering and dissatisfaction.

But as we begin to untangle this misperception, more and more we yearn to draw awareness back from thought.

And this meditation today really helps get you out of the marketplace of your mind

and really cultivate an inner quiet.

Ram Dass said, the quieter you become, the more you can hear.

If you are seeking that level of deep inner listening, then I invite you to join a new 10-day

meditation series with Ram Dass and other wonderful meditation teachers, including Jack

Cornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and others called Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now.

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