The One Thing I Think I Learned From Ram Dass

All over my social media I have seen Ram Dass recently passed away. I have never read anything he has written nor have I intentionally listened to him. That said, many of my friends and acquaintances looked to him for guidance, wisdom and solace in the journey called life.

I was riding in a car with one of Ram Dass’ fans while she had of his lectures playing on cassette tape. I cannot really remember who this was or even how long ago it was. Let’s just say I was in my mid to late twenties. What I think he said is still with me to this day.

The lecture was at the question and answer segment and what sounded like a female voice asked a question. The question was not clear enough for me to understand due to the emotion in her voice and the acoustics. Yet Ram Dass heard it as a question about suicide and responded. To paraphrase, he essentially said, we all die when it is our time whether it is by our own hands or not. That is all I remember. What really struck me was the emotion of the grief when we lose a loved one. And how suicide compounds that grief into trauma for those we leave here. Sometimes to the point of afflicting PTSD on our loved ones to either begin new a cycle of abuse or at the very least to continue an existing one.

Many of those who know me know that I am dealing with and healing from my own PTSD and depression. More often than I care to admit, I get suicidal. Some also know this and a few have helped me. Of course I am grateful for the help and support during these times. However the memory of Ram Dass’ voice talking about this and the overwhelming emotion of trauma of death by my own hand has been what has always stopped me. Believe it or not, I do not want to create more grief and trauma and I know I am not here to do that. While I have heard the same message of “we all die, when we’re supposed to” from many people this one from Ram Dass was the one that hit me the deepest.

Although I do not precisely remember what he said, I do remember hearing him and am grateful for his life and the messages of love he gave to so many.

Merry Winter to everyone!

All Of My Love.

Related posts:

I recently applied for the Symfony Certification and I thought: If I read all the documentation, I’m good to go, right? The Symfony documentation is great! But to be sure I read everything I wanted…

At the beginning of the year, we announced the evolution of the protocol, from Republic Protocol to Ren. This marked the beginning of a big change in the protocol, moving away from decentralised dark…

The web site is oriented much more in the direction of skilled personal laptop simply as NewEgg and retains quite a few of the very same highly effective attributes as NewEgg. Our high quality…