Your Altar

In Fierce Grace there are segments that discuss the spiritual experimentation with psychedelic drugs that helped transform Richard Alpert...respected Harvard professor into Ram Dass. He was the first Harvard professor who was fired in over a century. One segment of the video explains that the drug use was simply a method of trying to obtain enlightenment.  There are other methods.  There is the church method.  The relationship method.  Etc. Etc.  They are attempts at filling the soul hole....the God shaped hole in everyone's heart that nothing else can quite fill. 

He also talks about a period of intense drug experimentation at a big, old rambling house on someone's cattle ranch.  It was there that he became dissatisfied with the cycle of getting high, coming down, getting high, coming down, getting high, coming down.  So off to India he went where he met Neem Karoli Baba, also called Maharishi, a Hindu saint who became his teacher and guru. When he returned from India years later he knew that what he was searching for...was inside of him. 

Anyway in my here and there reading this weekend...there were two quotes I came across from two different interviews from two different eras in history.  I think it is safe to assume Ram Dass probably did not vote for John McCain?  But it made me wonder whose picture should be placed on our altars.  Who is a person who most closes your heart?  Who is hardest for you to love?  My answer took about 2 seconds to formulate. (Dr. Laura) Following are the quotes from the interviews.  Something to think about....whose picture would we find on your altar? 

From an interview in the 90's

David: I see that you have Bob Dole on your altar. That's a nice touch. (laughter)
Ram Dass: I take the person who most closes my heart and I watch my heart close as I look at their picture.

From a recent interview:

His house feels like a temple. There are altars everywhere, covered with pictures of saints, tropical flowers, candles and incense. He has a photo of George Bush on an altar, “because he’s someone I have trouble loving.”