A Flower from the Sky

When it’s time to do nothing except open up to what’s coming

Photo by Shadi on Unsplash

Be Here Now was the Bible of the 1970’s or, if not the Bible, then at least the Bhagavad Gita — a book that bridged the gap between East and West for an entire generation of long-haired, counter culture, God-seeking souls.

And I was one of them.

The author of the book, Baba Ram Dass — the ex-Harvard psychologist and popularizer of LSD — was fast becoming a new kind of spiritual rock star.

He had just returned from his pilgrimage to India with a ton of love and something even better than the Holy Grail — the ability to communicate the essence of Eastern wisdom in ways even suburban hippies could understand.

I read his book three times the first month I owned it. I read it twice the second month.

So when I heard that he was going to be speaking just a few miles from where I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I bought a ticket and went.

The evening was divided into three parts.

Part One was the introduction — Ram Dass holding forth in ways even your mother would…