The basic rule is to ‘be here now.’ The rule is to start from exactly where we are at this moment. The rule is to be able to say about oneself and the universe with all of it’s horror, with all of its beauty, with all of its imperfections, Kali and all her manifestations, “It is all right. It’s all OK.”

Murder, rape, overpopulation, pollution, riots, fascist doctrine, suppression of other human beings, starvation, birth, death, spring, and fall, and winter, it’s all right?

….Yes, it’s all right.

That I am this imperfect, impure being who’s got all these desires, and all these neuroses, and all these frustrations, and this is just the way it’s supposed to be? Aren’t I supposed to work for something? Aren’t I supposed to keep a model in my head of what is pure and right, what is good and how it should be, how my body, my thoughts, how the world, how people should be?

Every one of those models you keep in your head keeps it all from happening.

Water, when it floats downstream, when it goes downstream, doesn’t have a model of what it’s doing. It’s just being water, and water floats downstream, because that’s how water works. The thing that is extraordinarily hard for any of us to truly realize and to have sufficient faith to accept, is that if you stop having views, having models, planning, desiring, organizing, and structuring it’s all right.

You don’t stop your desires as long as you stay in a human body. You break the identification with them.

Thats all thats required.

It isn’t necessary to give up a thing. It’s necessary to give up attachment to the thing. That’s all that’s required.

-Ram Dass