Spiritual joy is devotion, it's like a virus you know? It's a benevolent virus, but it spreads. It's infectious. Ram Dass was like a mentor in those days.

I realize that was becoming a contradiction in terms, especially after my friend Alison Krauss was shot and killed in Kent State in 1970 on campus by the National Guard.

The heart is an organ of perception.

Why'd he name Ram Dass that? And Krishna Das that, instead of vice versa? Is Krishna Das more Krishna like and Ram Dass more Ram-like? Maybe... why not? We grow into our names. But why did my parents named me Jeffrey and my brother Michael? Who knows?

We cannot expect miracles of mindfulness in our own lives without preparation, commitment & continuing to energetically progress along our spiritual way.

It's not like we're all animalistic people trying to become more spiritual. We're really living spirit, trying to find out how to live embodied in this nitty gritty world, these corporeal forms, in these fleeting bodies in the material world where everything's changing and we're not in control.

The Pearl Principle - no inner irritation, no pearl.