We’re all just walking each other home

Ram Dass says that “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Why do these words touch something deep?

I figure it’s due to feeling alone and disconnected from ourselves and each other. Unhealthy levels of stress make it easy to get lost in our own little worlds, to become self-absorbed and shielded from each other’s suffering. Given the pain and injustice in the world, it is understandable. Ram Dass’s words touch deep because they arouse the sense of belonging, acceptance and unconditional love we all long for. 

Home is where we can love, be loved and belong. Home is the heart, and that’s exactly what we need–to get home to our hearts.

‘We all spend so much time living in this outer world, then we encounter things that force us into our inner world. The inner world is what I consider to be home.

In “walking each other home,” I’m talking about how we as individuals—individual persons or individual countries with all of the separation that we experience—through moving toward inner consciousness, can become one. That’s a shift in consciousness. If we can find a way to walk each other home, we could reach a point where there is no more conflict between egos and nations.’ - Ram Dass.

Being Seen

Being seen is one of humanity’s greatest needs. It’s a spiritual need, vital (as in life-giving). Whether we admit it or not, we’re all starving for at least one person to see us for the beautiful person we are inside, past personality and past protective layers. With no judgement from them and no pretend from us, it’s an acknowledgement of our shared humanity. Being truly seen can be a beautiful, humbling, even poignant experience, and it can affect the one doing the seeing as well as the one being seen.

We need each other. Certainly, we need time alone to know who we are, yet there are some things about ourselves that we can only learn in interaction with others. We need to be with other people and to experience life out in the world in order to know ourselves fully – to become “whole” persons. We provide the fodder for one another’s journeys. We take on various roles in one another’s plays on the great stage of life. And we create some amazing theater!

It’s been my experience that the more committed I am to learning and growing and being the best that I can be, the more opportunities keep showing up to enter with intention and awareness that which I have avoided and run away from. I don’t have to go looking for these opportunities – they find me. Sometimes more frequently than I’d like! And in those moments, when I’m lucky, I remember Ram Dass’ teachings.

And so lately I’m asking myself: What if the people I encounter in daily life are all, in their own way, walking me home? Probably very few of them have any conscious awareness of the roles they are playing in my life script. Yet what if they are just playing their part in helping me come home to who I really am? What if they are helping me find out what it means to be whole?

In the same way, what if I’m also walking them home? What if I’m playing a role in their homeward journey? What role might I choose to play for them?

And how might I choose to be with them if I consider that, at least for the moment, we are walking our homeward journeys side by side?

Certain moments, laughs and conversations with your tribe help you coalesce the kind of readings, explorations and work you have been navigating. Waking up today, I felt as though my growing integration of body, spirit & mind has cracked open wide. And for the better. Better not because things are easier, but because things, are all, merely for witness. And acceptance of such things, people and situations IS the work. We walk a path. No ones is superior to another. Compassion is true, unbridled oneness with all beings. 

I am grateful for those who continue to lift my understanding  and practice of this. Especially those whom I could have (and have had) misidentified as ‘challenging’ ‘obstructing’ or ‘wrong’. Practice remains practice- enduring, ongoing, active, difficult, beautiful. 

Our brief human time on this planet is ALL for learning. 

So much of this world is based on illusion, temporariness, and disposability that I think it's essential that our closest relationships reflect what is real.