As most are aware by now, Ram Dass, a spiritual pilgrim of his and our generation, has passed on into the light of the “home” his famous words spoke to.

Walking home is not for the faint of heart.

Which is why Ram Dass, along with other spiritual teachers, spoke so adamantly about the daily practice.

Showing up is the daily practice.

We can’t return to our true spiritual home unless we show up. Unless we do the work with awareness and intentionality.

Most spiritual seekers have tried it all. Yoga, meditation, energy healing, psychic readings, shamanic work, plant medicine, to name just a few. These are wonderful tools, mind you. Practices we can utilize to bring us into deeper presence with ourself and our world.

We do need to practice. But, at the end of our lives, all we truly have is our inner awareness and ability to connect to that. We may seek external means to do so, until one day, we realize the heart of the matter is within us. As we connect to the sacred heart, the sacred matter that holds and loves us infinitely beyond the point of our own passing, we more fully know who and what we are, and where we come from.

Spiritual teachers are here to remind us. They are here to remind us of what it is we already know, what our souls are already acutely aware of. We get lost in our conditioning process, lost in the ego mind of gratification and repulsion.

We were meant to seek the truth. We were meant to feel and remember this deeper truth inside of us.

As Ram Dass, and others, have taught, there is an ethereal web that connects us all. We may be different genders, identities, races, belief systems, or traditions, but underneath exists this same thread that weaves humanity together.

Until we can unite and remember ourselves as connected and not separate from the essence of love, we will continue to suffer and create suffering in ourselves and our world.

One man’s legacy is our own legacy, if we choose it.

We can choose awareness over judgment. We can choose kindness over aggression. We can choose peace over conflict. We can choose our perception and perspective over and over again, as much as we need to.

When we relate to ourselves or another with this kindred sense of interrelatedness, that your judgment is no different than my own, your hate no different than mine, your fear a shared experience, also, too, can we know that love is our shared essence.

We seek this home, whether we know it consciously or not. We seek a home in this world. A sense of belonging to ourselves. To each other. We may have learned various means to get that love we so desperately feel deprived of, through substance of various form.

Love is who we are. This is our true home.

Ram Dass knew this truth. He taught this truth. He lived this truth.

So, we can know, teach, and live it too.

He was a teacher, a guide, a man—a human, too.

We are all teachers, guides, and, of course, deeply human, too.

The beautiful thing about life is that the passing of one reminds us even more deeply of the things that matter.

Love, connection, peace, presence.

These things are real and powerful gifts we carry at all times, no matter how disillusioned or lost in our own internal or external warfare we may feel.

Awareness is the step inward, not outward. Back toward our home. Back toward our sacred remembrance.

Knowing all life, us included, as sacred in this dance. Sacred in this love. So, so utterly sacred and precious.

To a man who lived a life seeking his own true home in himself, in this world, in the stranger on the corner, we thank you. We honor you. We remember you as the love that we are.

It’s another reminder to go out and spread the good news. That we are already home. We are already saved. We are already made in this love that holds us still. It is the very fabric of creation.

How on earth could we have ever been separate from it?

The same love that creates also takes away in the same breath. To keep reminding us of how precious our time here on this earth is.

We can’t waste another minute of it hating ourselves into submission, judging ourselves into perfection, or aggressing toward our self or other in the name of righteousness or power.

Love shall have its day. And, that day is always today. That moment is always now.

And, now, and now.