Closing the year, Krishna Das explores the transformative power of deepening our awareness and how practice helps us navigate life’s challenges.

This time, on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das speaks on:

• Going within and deepening our awareness
• Subjective versus objective experiences
• Advice that Krishna received from Maharaj-ji
• How repeating the name gives us strength
• Practicing awareness and breaking bad habits
• How to work through heartbreak
• Coming back into an object of concentration
• Learning to trust your own heart

“There’s really no within and without except in the sense of physicality. Consciousness is not within or without. It permeates everything. Everything exists inside of awareness, of pure being.” – Krishna Das

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Krishna Das teaches listeners all that is possible through total sincerity of the heart and self-awareness.

This week on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das holds a talk on:

• How Krishna Das’ bar mitzvah transformed his outlook on organized religion
• What initially struck Krishna Das about Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy
• Sensing an ongoing connection to Ram Dass
• Sitting down and chanting without over-intellectualizing everything
• Having sincerity of heart and being kind to ourselves
• The inner and outer blanket of Maharaj-ji
• The difficult process of forgiving those who have hurt us
• Letting others be who they are and learn their own lessons
• Recognizing that the problems we have with others are often about ourselves

“Try to be kind to yourself. That’s all. You don’t need a mantra to be kind to yourself. You just need to recognize what that means and try to figure out why you’re not kind to yourself. You don’t need magic for that, you just need to pay attention. You need sincerity of heart. That’s what we need.” – Krishna Das

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Contrasting the physical, impermanent world with the ever-present spiritual world, Krishna Das shares insights from the heart space.

This time on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das shares insights on:

• How each situation has its own parameters
• Practicing the principle of non-harm
• Giving yourself 100% to whatever you are doing
• Conceptualizing our approach to religion
• The love that exists in the non-physical reality within us
• Real love versus conditional love
• Allowing people to be who they are
• Remembering the impermanent nature of pleasure
• The pressure from the times we live in

“Everything in your life can serve the spiritual side if you are ripe enough to pay attention. But most of us, including myself, we just want what we want when we want it and if we don’t get it, we don’t like it. We’re not going to learn a lot in that state of mind.” – Krishna Das

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Krishna Das guides listeners to develop the strength to overcome painful situations through regular practice and surrendering to what is.

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This week on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das dives into:

• Chanting for a balance between light and dark
• The inner strength to not identify with negative emotions
• Working through fear surrounding death of a loved one
• Krishna Das’ hot spring story
• Being kind to ourselves and allowing situations to normalize in due time
• Finding out ‘what is’ instead of just ‘want we want to be’
• Coming back to the chant to be in the present moment
• The continuous process of letting go

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“When somebody that we know and love is very ill and soon to leave the body, it brings up a lot of stuff in us. If you’re not doing regular practice, those moments are going to knock you out. They’re going to roll over you like a steam roller. You’ve got to be doing regular practice over time. That’s the only way to develop the strength to deal with these situations.” – Krishna Das

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Exploring the many fruits of making time for spiritual practice, Krishna Das shares the beauty of forgiving those who have hurt us.

This week, Krishna Das responds to questions on:

• The ways we nurture our wounds and carry our pain
• Forgiving those who have hurt us
• How hurt people hurt others out of their own pain
• The power of loving-kindness mediation for forgiveness
• Maturing and realizing that pain is just a part of life
• Forgiveness and kindness as the fruit of spiritual practice
• How the poison of attachment ruins love
• The Hanuman Chalisa as an offering to Maharaj-ji
• Chanting as a meditation practice
• Finding the time for practice in our busy lives
• Listening to our hearts and discovering what we really want in life
• Suspending disbelief and connecting to powers beyond ourselves
• Difficult familial relationships and doing the best we can

“As the fruit of our hearts is ripened and gets sweeter, those pains are left behind. But, there’s no button you can push; it’s the fruit of practice, that forgiveness, kindness, and compassion open us up.” – Krishna Das

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Krishna Das explains how we can serve our parents and release their karmas along with our own as a labor of love.

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This week, Krishna Das responds to questions on:

• What Maharaj-ji said about service to our parents
• Praying for people from afar and working through traumas
• Freeing our parents from their karmas
• Doing healing work on our own hearts
• Detaching from the ego and loving the soul instead of the role
• Seeing the boundless love and purity in everyone
• How negative mind-states can block us from sensing the guru
• How trying to hold onto pleasant feelings causes more suffering
• Maintaining equanimity no matter what we are receiving from the outside world

“While your parents are alive, if possible, one should try to release the negative energy in that relationship somehow. It’s something that we’ll carry with us for our whole lives and we will be hurt by those emotional knots within us.” – Krishna Das

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Amidst global and individual suffering, Krishna Das teaches listeners how to move forward even when our spirit is heavy.

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This week on Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das offers advice about:

• Coping when we are worn out from global and individual pain
• Honoring all of our feelings
• Using the handshaking practice for difficult emotions
• Recognizing that we are separate from our feelings
• Having a chanting practice to work on releasing feelings
• Why we cannot neglect our inner world
• Creating peace in the world through our own serenity
• Allowing ourselves to say no sometimes and building healthy boundaries
• Finding a balance between helping others and taking care of ourselves
• Developing a heart as wide as the world

“It’s possible to honor all of our feelings, even the heavy, negative feelings, and not allow them to destroy us.” – Krishna Das

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Dissolving our erroneous beliefs of separateness, Krishna Das shares the importance of continuous service and devotional practice.

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In this episode of Pilgrim Heart, Krishna Das speaks about:

• Service anytime and anywhere
• Planting seeds for the fruits of our practice
• Clearing out blockages in the body with asana practice
• Krishna Das' deep friendship with Maharaj-ji
• Samadhi and emerging into deeper states of consciousness
• How mantra can uncover the presence of spiritual beings
• Realizing that we are not our egos
• The principal of Sub Ek, or, All One
• KC Tewari and the film Brilliant Disguise

“Service can be done anytime and anywhere. It doesn’t have to be your job, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, it doesn’t have to make you money. Real service is learning how to treat other people with the same love and respect that we would like to be treated. You can do that now.” – Krishna Das

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Gracefully describing the truth of love that unites all people, Krishna Das shares how self-compassion can extend into the world.

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This week, Krishna Das responds to questions on:

• The concept of Sub Ek, or, all one
• Making peace with the many paths to God
• How relationships help us see where we need to work on ourselves
• Having compassion for ourselves so we can extend kindness to others
• Recognizing the impact of our actions on the world
• Freewill versus the karmic seeds that we are born with
• Dealing with discomfort instead of seeking out pleasure
• Choosing whichever practice feels right to us
• Being open to whatever arises during our practice
• The subtle transformations that occur throughout our spiritual journey

“If we’re hard on ourselves, if we don’t have kindness and compassion for our own selves and our own stuff, we really can’t be kind for other people. We can pretend to be kind, which is what most of us do, but real kindness comes from recognizing that we’re all in this together. We’re all here together in this world and all of our actions are very powerful.” – Krishna Das

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Discover new approaches to overcoming life’s challenges! In this episode of the Pilgrim Heart Podcast, Krishna Das offers powerful teachings that empower you to take control of your own liberation from suffering.

In today's episode, KD reflects on:

• Developing the quality of bodhicitta
• Staying present through tragedy and suffering
• Changing how the present moment feels rather than being lost in the past
• The impossibility of avoiding pain
• Coping with the loss of a loved one
• Dealing with reality rather than seeking constant bliss
• Creating positive habits and releasing destructive emotions
• Practicing coming back to our breath
• Putting ourselves in others shoe’s when they hurt us

“It is our own minds that create the suffering and it is our minds that liberate us from suffering.” – Krishna Das

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