Karen Restivo
In Other Words....
The phrase “walking each other home” has a special place in my heart because it pierced the veil of delusion that somehow, we’re all alone on this journey between life and the afterlife.
The phrase is commonly thought to be generated from the 1960s-70s spiritual teacher Ram Dass.
What most folks don’t realize is that Dass was a Harvard professor.
Author Jay Ford reflects on Dass’s history, “Under a previous name, he was a Harvard professor who was kicked out for his experiments with students involving the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.
Later, Dass became Hindu.”
Perhaps Ram Dass took multiple ‘trips’ in his lifetime as a seeker.
Regardless, his words are often found in relation to caregiving, community support, spiritual awareness and the afterlife.
Continuing with this vein of thought, Center of Action and Contemplation staff member and author Michael Petrow paid homage to one of his own spiritual teacher’s, Dr. Barbara Holmes.
In a recent Facebook post related to the passing of Dr. Homes, Petrow finds common ground between both Holmes and Dass that we are never alone.
Petrow says, “Dr. Homes has taught me that we are never less alone than when we feel alone, because we are sharing an experience with our entire human family.
“Fitting since Holmes expanded my understanding of contemplation beyond that of a singular experience, that I undertook alone to be alone with the alone.
“We are all in fact…’Alone with the Alone, Together’. “She showed me that contemplative practice is all about connection.
“Now, I get into the quiet to learn how to listen. I close my eyes to learn how to see. “I close my mouth to learn how to speak. I still my body to learn how to take action.
“I step away to learn how to come back. I get alone to learn how to be in community.
“I take care of myself, to learn how to take care of others. I pay attention to the divine in me, so that I can hear it in you and all things.”
The premise of never being alone can be both mysterious and wonderous, but nonetheless worth taking time to contemplate.
Under MindfullinYoga.com,
The image that Ram Dass’s sentence evokes is of the warmth, belonging, and safety of ‘home.’
“It implies a journey and an arrival, of returning home after completion of an arduous trip.
“The resolution to this paradox lies in reading the sentence in its entirety.
“His statement is about more than the homecoming metaphor alone; the key is that we are all walking each other home.
“There is an element of togetherness, collectivity and support in our seeking: it works when we do it together.”
(For those readers that have held tightly on to the railing as I ushered you down this rabbit hole with me, this article is finished.
For those readers willing to continue through the philosophical passageway, read further.)
In other words,
MindfullinYoga.com continues,
“This is the element that resolves the tension between the journey as both ‘coming home’ and ‘realizing we are already home.’
If home is the realization of our mutual interdependence, our interconnection, then the liberating dissolution of the self in union with the universal is both the home towards which we walk and the journey itself.
Home is walking together.”
Welcome home…
Karenrestivo57@gmail.com