As Ram Dass so beautifully put it, we are all just walking each other home. Ram Dass, as you may not know, was a Harvard professor who realized the height of his professional ambitions — and still discovered a deep, ever-pervading discontent and suffering. So he went on a journey to India to try to discover the true secret to happiness.
And he found this spirituality over in India, and came back in 1970 and began teaching what he’d learned to Americans.
He would frequently talk about his time working with dying AIDS patients, or when he was working on behalf of his nonprofit and negotiating with local governments to bring aid in. He said that before he would begin, he would sit with these people, and wait, until the identity that he was playing, that role of nonprofit organizer, or spiritual guru, would fall away.
And then there was just consciousness, looking at consciousness. He saw past the other person’s role and identity, until there were simply two souls connecting. And I think that is a beautiful way to see the world. Because there is that same light of consciousness that is within me, that is within you. And we can all see the world this way.
To demonstrate this, I’ll just ask: Can you imagine if you were in someone else’s shoes? If you had been born with their brain, and their body, lived their same life experience, had their nationality, their identity, and their upbringing, can you not see that you would be that exact same person?
And there really is no other answer.
Of course, we would. If we had someone’s brain, if we had everything that shaped that person,
If we saw what kind of behavior gets rewarded in their community, and what gets punished or demonized — all of that would shape our behavior into being exactly the same, if we were in anyone else’s shoes.
And none of us had a choice about what brain we were born with, what body we were given, what looks we have, what parents and community we grow up in. But once we start to recognize that — beneath that brain and body, beneath that family history — there is a light of consciousness that shines through us all, and appears out our eyeballs…
We could call it the universe’s consciousness. Our eyes are the universe’s eyes. We are the ears of the universe. And once we recognize that essence, that is within every living being as our own — that we all want love, peace, kindness, just like we all have a hunger for food and seek it out — we all crave this peace, love, and joy.
So we know it is an innate part of life itself. Just like every animal feels hunger, knows how to find food, and eat it, we are all working toward that life.
Some people, whether it’s because of their brain, or their upbringing, may have a hard time getting home, as Ram Dass called it, to find that inner center where we can rest in peace and love. But once we recognize ourselves in others, the oneness within all of us, our judgments disappear.
And compassion is a very natural reaction to this experience. Because we can only judge and condemn when we fail to realize the causes that made a person a certain way. We can only feel hatred when we lack understanding of our true human nature.
And when we can simply experience that empathy — which is to love others as we love ourselves, and to share that feeling of what each of us is going through — we can help people, no matter what they’ve gone through, or what they’re going through.
Even though someone may have never experienced any peace or love in their life, and they have no idea what those words mean, and no idea how to get it, and so they act out, and they commit crimes, or acts of cruelty… we can respond with a loving example that can show them the way. And we can walk each other home.
