Ram Dass on Finding Peace in the Space Between Thoughts

Cultivating Calm Through Breath Awareness

• 🧘 Following your breath gently for 15 minutes can help manage anger by bringing attention away from the emotion.
• ⚠️ When angry thoughts arise, acknowledge them without judgment and return your attention to the breath.
• 🌬️ As your breath quiets, you gain perspective on the situation, allowing you to see the humor or absurdity of your anger.

The Nature of Suffering and Perspective

• ⛓️ Suffering often stems from getting lost in a single perspective, attachment to labels, or rigid definitions of reality.
• 🧠 Training to experience suffering as just pain while maintaining a separate self is key to not being consumed by it.
• 🔑 The space around events and experiences provides leverage for change and a secure sense of being.

Identifying with Pure Awareness

• 🍂 Imagine leaves (thoughts) floating down a stream (awareness); the space between the leaves is the stream.
• 💡 We are the pure awareness or the space between thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.
• 🧠 Meditation develops the capacity to identify with the space between thoughts, which is unchanging and expansive.

The Benefits of Identified Awareness

• ✨ Identifying with this space does not diminish the capacity to think or act.
• 🚀 Instead, thinking and acting become more effective and optimal when existing in this spacious awareness.