The Game Is To Be Where You Are

Reading Ram Dass's passage The Game Is To Be Where You Are reminds me a beautiful poem "Come As You Are" written by Rabindranath Tagore. When we love someone, we don't love the outer form of the beloved. We love the inner being of the person which is just like us. Ram Dass uses the metaphor of taking the mask off to see the beauty of the original face without any makeups. I love the Zen Koan: Find your original face before you were born. The Indian poet Mira sings: Remove the veil and you will meet your beloved. This is the way I relate to the notion that the game is to be where we are.

I have had several experiences of being loved as I am. My mother did not have any conditions for loving me as I was. She planted and nurtured the seeds of unconditional love as I was growing up. She was a role model for me. I was blessed to have her in my life. I learned from her how to love and relate to people in my life as they are. As years passed I have been able to cultivate spiritual maturity in me. To me life is a spiritual journey or as Ram Dass says it
is a spiritual game.

Trees look different when we look at them with outward eyes. When we look at the same trees with clear inward eyes we see the treeness, the oneness, the essence, among all trees. I follow three steps for cultivating spiritual maturity:

• listening to the people who are on the path of spiritual maturity,
  
• reflecting on their teachings, and
  
• applying them in my daily living.
  

This is called sadhana, spiritual discipline.

Namaste!