Walking Each Other Home

What more noble experience can there be than walking each other home to the center of our being – to peace, happiness, and freedom. The journey home has never been solely an individual journey. Even the most solitary monk, nun, or seminarian takes their journey in the context of a community, teacher, and spiritual friends. It's only the ego that perceives this journey as a solitary hero’s quest. That’s the dilemma of modern times.  Join me in this discussion and practice.

Transcript

                                    Walking Each Other Home

 What more noble experience can there be than walking each other home to the center of our being – to peace, happiness, and freedom. The journey home has never been solely an individual journey. Even the most solitary monk, nun, or seminarian takes their journey in the context of a community, teacher, and spiritual friends. 

It's only the ego that perceives this journey as a solitary hero’s quest. That’s the dilemma of modern times. The personal “I” can neither perceive nor experience what lies beyond an individual sense of freedom. The teacher Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, we are “inter-being.” No one individual can be truly free until we are all free. The web of conditioning and narcissism ensnares each of us. When we become more peaceful, heartfelt, and free, we serve as a beacon that illuminates the path, transmits essence through presence, and highlights the experience of wholeness and oneness for others to taste. At its best, illumination is a contagious process.

When I consider all the forces and factors that bring me to the cushion and support my effort, I recognize the inter-connectedness of my seemingly solitary efforts. My well-being, the logistics that sustain me, the teachings that serve as a guide, the circumstances that support my teacher and the teachings, the paper the books are written on, the computer that offers teachings and meditations, and it continues. The inter-connectedness is all inclusive. 

Our perceived aloneness is only an artifact of the belief that we are each a separate self. This mentally constructed personal self assists us in navigating the activities of daily life. But ultimately, it cannot take us beyond the challenges, anxiety, fears, and aloneness of modern life. It cannot take us towards true connectedness, unity, and wholeness that is our essence. For that we need to move beyond our ego self to our foundational and essential self, the true treasure of human existence. 

The phrase “walking each other home” is attributed to the spiritual teacher Ram Das. He spoke of our shared desire to return home to the center of our being, to our wholeness, to our oneness with existence. We need each other when we confront challenges, get discouraged, revert back to old ways, forget who we truly are, and are confronted by the reality of death and transition. We need the warmth, caring, and encouragement of a spiritual community. What we don’t need is the misguided drama of heroic individualism that has been perpetuated in modern times at great cost to soul and spirit.

In meditation we take off the “personality suit” given to us early in life. Our personal identity dissipates and we are “naked” to life. Without the obscuration of our personal self we can reveal and experience the unchanging self that lies beyond. At this level of presence and awareness our separateness and self-cherishing dissipate as well. What’s revealed is our oneness, a unity with all. This cannot be understood or known through the capacities of a personal ego. For this we must go beyond.

Walking each other home has two components. The first is supporting another’s journey in whatever way that’s possible. The second is most important. It is to hold a knowing presence so that others can gain fortitude from the knowledge that their journey is known to another as well. We are not alone. Together, rich conversation, silent communion, shared teachings, group meditations, and an out-stretched hand are the elements of walking each other home. 

There is also an out-stretched hand during those moments when we fall off the journey, and are once again “stuck” in the web of our ego identity and its dramas. It will happen to all of us and that can be the source of further growth and development. It’s at these times that we are able to fine tune our compassion and care for others, transforming the ego web into the more spacious web of inter-connection.

We are each grateful to those, known and unknown, who stand with us in this universal and sacred journey of revelation and fulfillment. Together we will come to know our shared consciousness. Although inner development is a valued accomplishment, when our large aim is to seek an awakened life with and for the benefit of all others, our journey transforms into a noble one. That shared aspiration is how we walk each other home.