Does One Hard Day End Everything?

One of the things I love about Ram Dass is the way he enters a seeming paradox.

He says something that sounds almost discouraging.

Then he turns it slightly, and somehow the same truth becomes reassuring.

In a lecture from 1978, he describes the spiritual path this way:

“Half the time you feel you fell out of grace, and the other half you’re drunk with it.”

Well.

That sounds a little depressing.

But Ram Dass did not say it was depressing.

He asks:

“How many ups and downs does it take before you recognize that the downs are as much as the ups part of the process?”

He has not promised that the lows will stop coming.

He has questioned why we keep calling them failure.

For a few days, something in you softens.

You are patient with someone who usually gets under your skin.

You begin to think, quietly, Maybe I’m growing!

Then an ordinary Monday arrives.

And the mind will not settle.

You snap at someone you love.

The old fear returns with all its habits.

Almost immediately, another thought follows:

I lost it. What’s wrong with me?

The difficult day is no longer simply difficult.

It has become evidence that none of the peaceful days were actually real. You’re fooling yourself.

Because underneath all our sincere practice is a hope we rarely admit: