Notes On…Be Here Now, with Ram Dass

There’s something about Be Here Now that lingers.

Not just as a book, but as a way of seeing. Ram Dass had this quiet gift: he made presence feel like an invitation instead of a chore. He wasn’t selling self-improvement or spiritual achievement. He was offering something simpler. Show up for your life as it is. No need to fix it first.

We hear the word “mindfulness” everywhere now. But really, it comes down to something very basic. Can you be here, right now, without needing to escape? That’s what Ram Dass kept returning to. He believed the present moment is where real freedom lives. Not in going backward to relive the past, and not in trying to script the future. Just here. The place where your life is actually happening.

Of course, being present is messy. The mind doesn’t quiet easily. The ego, what Ram Dass described as the part of us always grasping for identity, approval, control, wants something to chase. It tells us we aren’t enough until we fix something. So we strive. We spin. We search for answers to problems that often come from believing we’re broken.

Be Here Now offers something gentler. Presence isn’t a performance. It’s a practice. You can find it in a single breath. In how you listen. In noticing the way light hits the side of a coffee cup. Sometimes it’s just the decision to pause mid-overthinking and come back to now, even for a moment.

As a therapist, I see this play out every day. People don’t find peace by solving everything. They find it when they start making space for what is. When they stop bracing against discomfort and soften around it instead. When they realize they don’t need to chase the moment in order to belong to it.

That’s what Be Here Now leaves behind. Not a rule or a command. Just a gentle reminder. Come home. You’re already here.