Compassionate Presence, LLC

Ram Dass- an expanded version of his teaching by a guy named Jake:

“Surrender to the One (the single divine reality that exists behind all forms of life and consciousness).

Surrender (letting go of the ego’s need to control and trusting the deeper intelligence of the heart) to your atman (the deeper Self within you, the quiet awareness that witnesses your thoughts, emotions, and personality), because you have the One (the same divine consciousness that lives in all beings) inside of you.

That means you don’t surrender to the God with a beard, you surrender to the God inside (the living presence of love and awareness within your own heart).

My relationship with Maharajji (Neem Karoli Baba, the guru who awakened Ram Dass to the path of love and devotion) is an inside job. Once he left his body, I could very much identify him inside of me, and I would surrender to that voice inside (the intuitive guidance that arises from the heart when the mind becomes quiet).

That voice is joyful, compassionate, loving, peaceful, and wise. I find it very enjoyable to surrender (to relax the struggle of the separate self and rest in trust) to that God inside (the loving awareness that lives within your own consciousness).

If you shift your identification into the atman (recognizing yourself as the awareness behind your thoughts rather than the personality built from them), you will see what the world looks like to the One (a world experienced through unity, where everything arises within the same field of consciousness).

It’s quite different than the world you perceive through your ego (the small sense of “me” created by personal history, roles, and conditioning).

It’s a fun thing to surrender (because when the burden of controlling life drops away, what remains is a natural feeling of freedom and love).”

Cool stuff to ponder……

“Sometimes compassion will arise spontaneously, like the clouds parting to reveal the blue sky. At other times we may have to make a conscious effort, which is a bit more like imagining what the blue sky looks like, even when it’s obscured by clouds.”

Andy Puddicombe, “10 Tips for Living More Mindfully”

This excerpt from his book can work for theists and atheists:

- Thich Nhat Hanh expresses his view of “Inter-being”:

“Our cosmic body is the universe, creation, the masterpiece of God. Looking deeply into the cosmos, we see its true nature. And we can say that the true nature of the cosmos is God. Looking deeply into creation, we see the creator.

At first it seems as though things exist outside one another. The sun is not the moon. This galaxy is not another galaxy. You are outside me. The father is outside the son. But looking deeply, we see that things are interwoven.

We cannot take the rain out of the flower or the oxygen out of the tree. We cannot take the father out of the son or the son out of the father. We cannot take anything out of anything else. We are the mountains and rivers; we are the sun and stars. Everything inter-is.

This is what the physicist David Bohm called “the implicate order.” At first we see only “the explicate order,” but as soon as we realize that things do not exist outside one another, we touch the deepest level of the cosmic. We realize that we cannot take the water out of the wave. And we cannot take the wave out of the water. Just as the wave is the water itself, we are the ultimate.

Many still believe that God can exist separately from the cosmos, his/her creation. But you cannot remove God from yourself; you cannot remove the ultimate from yourself. Nirvana is there within you.

If we want to touch the ultimate, we have to look within our own body and not outside. Contemplating deeply the body from within, we can touch reality in itself.

If your mindfulness and concentration are deep as you practice walking meditation in nature, or as you contemplate a beautiful sunset or your own human body, you can touch the true nature of the cosmos."

~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living

“Be aware of the transformational process, no matter what (Enneagram) type you are.
Psychology without spirituality is arid and ultimately meaningless, while spirituality without grounding in psychological work leads to vanity and illusions.”

- The Enneagram Institute

Russ Hudson

Thanks Jim Palmer for this sharing. The commonalities of our religions should be enough to show the oneness, which really is all of humanity. Our religions or our chosen spiritual paths can just be subgroups with the One group.

For me, the evidence for the oneness of humanity is that all human beings experience loss and grief exactly the same way. Further evidence is our access to compassion within to comfort others who have lost and are grieving. Unless mental illness prevents us to experience loss and grief, we all hurt when we lose. Addictions are mostly numbing reactions to unresolved trauma and grief.

Any so-called religious “uniqueness”, better than, or separation from others that we feel comes from either our own fear of somehow being less than, or being not good enough. Worse, our stories and myth about what happens after we die and our fear of death somehow makes us feel we “have the answers” to the ambiguities and mysteries of life.


“My God is better than your God.
My religion is better than your religion.
My spirituality is better than your spirituality.
My philosophy is better than your philosophy.
My enlightenment is better than your enlightenment.
My liberation is better than your liberation.
My unbelief is better than your unbelief.
My deconstruction is better than your deconstruction.
My culture is better than your culture.
My gender is better than your gender.
My country is better than your country.
My political party is better than your political party.
My body is better than your body.
My intelligence is better than your intelligence.
My reputation is better than your reputation.
My success is better that your success.
My social media fame is better than your social media fame.
My neighborhood is better than your neighborhood.
My children are better than your children.

And the wheels on the bus go round and round.

Aren't we tired yet?

Meanwhile, beneath all those layers of ego formulations there is only one essence and ground of being from which we are all equal manifestations, and unite all of us together as one at the most fundamental level.

When we are operating out of our ego beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that are programmed in our heads we are divided and separated. But when we step out of all these ego formulations and sink into the truth of our innermost being and deep knowing, then there is no real conflict or division between us.

We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us, and wealth classified us. All differences in this world are our mental constructions, and mask the truth of what we are. It's true that human diversity is beautiful, as long as we remember that oneness is the secret of everything.”

Jim Palmer

For those born Jewish and looking for new ways to meaningfully be Jewish in modern ways, check this site out. For non Jewish people just curious about modern “rebooting” Judaism, check it out:

Rebooting Jewish Life Reboot is an arts and culture non-profit that reimagines and reinforces Jewish thought and traditions. As a premier R&D platform for the Jewish world, we catalyze our Reboot Network of preeminent creators, artists, entrepreneurs and activists to produce experiences and products that evolve the Jewis...

If you would like to support the recovery efforts in Western North Carolina, here are three great organizations to which I will be donating. 

Operation Airdrop

Operation Airdrop is a volunteer organization of pilots and aviation enthusiasts dedicated to providing rapid dis
aster relief. Using small aircraft, they deliver essential supplies—such as food, water, and medical aid—to communities impacted by natural disasters.



Manna Foodbank

MANNA FoodBank is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending hunger in Western North Carolina. Serving 16 counties since 1983, MANNA sources and distributes food to a network of over 200 partner agencies, including food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters.


Foothills Food Hub

In the aftermath of natural disasters like Helene, Foothills Food Hub plays a critical role in providing emergency food assistance to affected communities. Supporting Foothills Food Hub helps ensure that vulnerable populations receive the nourishment they need during recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Hi everyone

I’m in an initial inner inquiry for a new book project on religious trauma. By simple definition, religious trauma - like any trauma- are past things said, or done, not said or not done that linger in our psyche that gets activated in the here and now. Physical, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse, and also tragic events / violence/ disasters / war witnessed or experienced are all examples.

However, religious trauma is typically caused by toxic biblical text, toxic Clergy, toxic teaching and fear-based concretized beliefs that leave us highly anxious, self-loathing, belittled and wounded.

If you have stories of your own religious traumatic experiences, please PM me

From a FORMER Evangelical Minister (who speaks for anyone who is, or was caught up in religious cult or a fundamentalist/ orthodox religion out of fear). I have nothing against religion, if it brings meaning to life and does not “other” those whose spiritual path is different. I have nothing against religion, unless a follower is using religion to avoid dealing with trauma, grief and pain.

A Toxic Religious Guide to Sabotaging Your Life:

1. Begin with the premise that there is something hopelessly and incurably wrong with you.

2. Believe that your humanity is an offense needing forgiveness, an illness needing cured, a monster to be feared, and an evil to repress.

3. Pin your hopes on the afterlife, and don’t get too vested in the herelife.

4. Mistrust your innermost thoughts and feelings.

5. Give others the power and authority to determine what your beliefs, values, opinions, goals, desires, and views are.

6. Fear, reject, condemn, and close yourself off from anyone or anything that isn't approved by the above "others."

7. Focus on behavior modification, checklists, do’s and don’ts, obedience, and keeping the rules.

8. Give up or kill off your needs, desires, interests and aspirations as a sign of spiritual maturity and call it “dying to self.”

9. Make sure everything and everyone in life is assigned a label and put into a box.

10. Mistrust science, psychology and philosophy as “secular,” “carnal,” or “worldly,” and stay away from it.

11. Consider talk of love, unity, harmony, peace, beauty and oneness as childish, foolish, idealistic, or dangerous.

12. Draw a line between “sacred” and “secular” and divide up the world accordingly.

13. Separate humankind into “us” and “them,” and stay away from “them” and judge “them” from a distance.

14. Lock up and throw away the key to your sexuality and get busy focusing on something that is holy.

15. Put forth a valiant effort to project and maintain an image that lines up with the expectations of your religious community, and hide the ways you don’t.

16. Don’t ask questions, rock the boat, challenge authority, think for yourself, or listen to that voice inside… just keep doing or believing even if it violates something deep inside of you.

- Jim Palmer

This gem came today in a daily emailing. It’s helpful in these turbulent times we are all facing:

“The profound sadness / fear that overwhelms us when we understand the impermanent nature of all phenomena opens us up to the world around us. We open our hearts and begin to notice our fellow beings.”

-Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche