Access the Course: The Yoga of Heartfulness 4-Week Course • Ram Dass
Has this week’s material changed your idea of what “Guru” means? How?
Given what it means to you, share a photo of it if possible.
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YES! They live in my heart, and now I invite them in…Ram Dass, Maharaji, and the Buddha. Trudy Goodman’s mediation was exceptional…the semi-circle of beings loving you and that you love. This is now part of meditation practice, they join my heart every morning, somedays with flowing strength, and other days just presence, but they are always there in love. 
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This week Surrender goes hand in hand with the Guru for me. The Guru is everywhere. We’ve recently been worried about some young fox kits that we thought had lost their mother. So we tested this out by putting out a live trap (tied open so it wouldn’t shut them in) with food inside and a nature cam. On the video, the kits sniffed at the food and the cage, but didn’t go in. And we are pretty sure that they are teaching us that they’re not hungry, that they are just fine, and mom and dad are feeding them. We just don’t SEE all of this. We don’t have a full understanding. And so these wee ones are helping us learn more about the dance of Nature, and when we two-leggeds need to step back. So this week, the Guru has big ears and a fuzzy little body. And I surrender. Oh, HUGE-MONS. We always have room to expand our understanding.
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Called upon some AI-generated help to visually express:
The teaching I’ve absorbed is Guru, God, and Self are one - so Guru can be found within your own heart too. Makes me think of how Krishna Dass recounts his struggles during the time immediately after Maharaji took mahasamadhi; according to him he went through a very tough time dealing with Maharahji leaving his body, and would go as far as travelling around India searching for him, not entirely believing that he actually left his physical form. And as he tells it, the people he would talk to during this search would look at him with astonishment and say things like “Really?? You do not know? Your guru lives within you, he is looking out of your eyes! What are you searching out here for?!”
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Love this, Zach! Hadn’t heard this particular story, and it is incredibly poignant. What a learning! And the art is brilliant. 
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OMG…I LOVE THIS! Thank you for sharing. Such wisdom in nature.
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Ah!!! Such a teaching! Thank you for sharing.
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I like Ram Dass’ suggestion when selecting a Guru to consider those who live at least two towns away. This, for me, highlights the practice relevant purpose of the guru while not getting attached. It is a vehicle for the practice/journey. Altho I do not have a ‘guru’, nor are pursuing one, I appreciate the teaching pointing me in the direction of openess and inquiry.
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Spot on Dana! Same here.
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Guru is the seeing. Seeing the good, bad, ugly, beautiful truth. I don’t find it be a person but an essence, I think when someone is bearing their truth in its rawest more pure form is where the guru flourishes. When it’s gruesome to be authentic, the guru lives there. It’s these moments in us where the courage and bravery to BE in spaces where our truth isn’t alway welcome, that’s the guru. To show up fully in those spaces is the guru. The guru can be someone we pray to but it isn’t someone we idolize, I think even the concept of idolizing removes the alignment because then we aren’t living in out truth and being our own guru or showing our guru-ness to others.
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…so awesome @Zach_V! Never thought about using AI! Great job participating in helping future AI back with questions like this :).
This was such a cool paragraph!
It brought me back to Jai and KD answering the questions regarding ‘what do those of us who did not sit with Guruji do?’ and they would speak to him teaching them to not be attached to him in that way.
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