Ram Dass demonstrated through his stroke experience what it means to truly walk one's talk, for he managed to re-frame a frightening, painful and shocking event that would completely change his life and abilities forever, into what he would eventually refer to as "fierce grace" (which also became the title of a wonderful film about his ordeal.) The teaching he offered is that all circumstances—seemingly good or bad from our own perspective—can be seen, felt and even known as God's Grace, if one is but willing to hold them that way and learn from them rather than merely complain and be the unfortunate victim of a terrible turn of events in one's life.

Of course, being a spiritual hero to thousands, Ram Dass really had no choice; he couldn't very well indulge in kvetching about his reality for very long, or behaving as if God and his Guru were somehow suddenly absent from the universe! Clearly, if God is real and present—no matter what happens—then one must learn to accept all experiences ultimately as the Grace of God, some more fierce than others.

For most of us, though, how could having a stroke, being paralyzed on one side, and initially losing nearly all of one's speech capacity, possibly be the Grace of God? If such a thing happened to me, I know I'd be extremely pissed off at God, and asking questions like, "What about playing guitar and piano? Or bicycling? I mean, I teach movement and dance for crying out loud!"

Rabbi Harold Kushner's famous query comes to mind: "Where is God when bad things happen to good people?" According to the mystics among us, the answer is always the same: God is present, and cannot possibly be elsewhere, for the "One Vast Eternal Omnipresent Source of All Being and Existence " certainly cannot be off at a brothel in Thailand while you're being mugged in New York City. No, as Thich Nat Hanh might say, God is the mugger and the mugged (and the Thai prostitute.) Given the daily state of affairs in our own lives as well as the headlines from around the world that bombard us each morning, if any of us presume to intuit the Presence of God, then that Presence is clearly not impacted one way or the other by actual events that occur. The good stuff that happens doesn't mean God is here, and the bad stuff doesn't mean the Divine has left the building. God is the animating force, or the all-pervading intelligence within which all experience takes place. The Tibetan Buddhists call it Cognizant Emptiness. Not very spiritually romantic for devotional, religious types, but probably accurate.

I had a video Skype session with Ram Dass a few years ago, a service called "Heart-to-Heart" that he makes available to his website subscribers. My agenda in setting up the conversation was to ask him for his blessing before I set out on a book tour to promote The 99th Monkey, a memoir that featured my history with him in the first and last chapters, symmetrically framing the whole work. And though I had badgered him repeatedly the previous year, in the end he had opted not to endorse the back of my book. So now, if I couldn't get his blurb, I felt I at least needed his blessing. He paused a moment when I asked, closed his eyes to search for his answer, then looking straight into the camera and pointing his finger, said very calmly, "You have my blessing, as long as you tell the truth."

That gave my little brain plenty to think about! Was he saying I didn't tell the truth in the book? That I somehow misrepresented him in my story? What did he mean? I didn't ask, and rather than try and figure out his answer, I lived, as Rilke said, "inside the question." As I traveled the country on my book tour, it became my personal Zen koan each time I took the stage.

And I think I told the truth. Mostly.

He also gave me an extremely valuable piece of advice: "If you go on a book tour as an ego, in order to sell books," he said, "it is a complete pain in the butt. But if you approach each event as a gathering of souls, then you can have a meaningful evening together." I took that very much to heart, and brought my guitar along and wound up singing and chanting with people in bookstores all across the country, and I do believe that souls were touched. Mine was.

Apart from that Skype call, though, I hadn't seen Ram Dass for quite some time. Since I was to be on Maui, not 10 minutes from his home, I requested some moments of his time, and he was gracious enough to receive me at his gorgeous home overlooking the sea. His living room features a very large, holy shrine adorned with flowers, photos and sacred relics, that pays homage to his Guru and many other saints from a diversity of religious traditions. Although he can swim in his pool and walk a bit with a walker, he is for the most part confined to a wheelchair, presumably for the rest of his life. Yet not only is he not complaining, it seems he has managed to arrive at an even happier and more content state of being than ever before! This is clear both from being in the room with him as well as from his own public talks about his process in the years since the stroke.

I first met Ram Dass in 1975 at the age of 23, when I was first emerging as a spiritual seeker, full of longing and penetrating questions, deeply hungry for answers and direction. Ram Dass was bigger than life, rapidly gaining worldwide notoriety as a counter-cultural hero and teacher to millions, and author of what was becoming the pivotal spiritual guidebook of those tumultuous times, Be Here Now. He had returned from India wearing the trappings of that culture—white robe and beads and long, wild hair and beard. But even in his more ordinary American attire, he exuded a powerful, loving presence that was quite palpable, penetrating and real.

I vividly remember the intensity and significance of our first meeting. He would often do an exercise with new students that involved sitting across from one another, eyeball to eyeball, with the instruction, "Anything that comes into your mind that you don't want to share with me, share with me." It was astounding for me to witness and subsequently reveal the vast array of normally private, psychological material—shameful secrets, things I was embarrassed about and so forth—and to feel the unconditional love pouring through his eyes as he listened silently to all that came spilling out of me in what amounted to being a liberating confessional of sorts. The exercise continued until I reached my limit, my line in the sand, where there were just certain things too horrible to say aloud, and I didn't, and he didn't ask me to.

And I never have, to him. In a way, I never completed that exercise.