I am a member of the "Spiritual Cinema Circle". It's like a "book of the month club" with movies. Each month I receive a DVD filled with wonderfully uplifting and spiritually significant movies.
The May volume includes a documentary called "Fierce Grace". The movie is about Ram Dass, a spiritual guru from the early 1970's. We are given an inside look at how Richard Alpert travelled to India in 1967, underwent a spiritual transformation, and returned to the US in 1969 renamed "Ram Dass" which means "servant of God".
The movie really gets interesting when Ram Dass begins to discuss how his spiritual beliefs were tested in 1997 when he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed.
When he is speaking about trying to come to terms with his new life he makes the following statement: "The suffering comes when you try to hold on to continuity."
What a fantastic realization!
How often have you and I condemned ourselves to suffering simply by trying to hold on to some notion of how our lives ought to have been? "But this isn't the way it was supposed to be!" - Have you ever said that? I know I have.
Since coming to terms with my expiry date I have come to understand that true peace and happiness are found in not struggling against what is, but by being mindful of the present and making the most of what we have at any given moment.
ENJOY NOW!
