Moving with Grace

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12 mins September, 2026
Moving with Grace
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Three steps to a permanent move to our real home.


by Thomas Mallery


It was our second of the day. We’d made multiple attempts to reach the customer by phone prior to knocking on the door. On our way to the elevator, the senior man on the crew cynically commented that our customer was probably still asleep and not packed (the ultimate sin against a mover). After we’d banged on the door a few times, it swung open. You never know what will be revealed when that door opens. In this case, a disheveled man was the foreground to a studio apartment in utter disarray. There are varying degrees to being “packed,” but this was complete negligence.


The customer assured us with alcohol-laden breath that he would “get things together.” We hauled on our backs what was sealed and easy to carry. Personal items jostled and shook and spilled out of furniture drawers. We didn’t take the time to wrap one piece of furniture, nor did we care how safely all his belongings were packed as they were carried out the door and indignantly tossed into the truck. Our lack of care was a direct effect of his lack of preparation. Had he been dying – moving out of his body – rather than just moving out of his apartment, his being ill-prepared would have had far more dire consequences.


In my time working as a mover by day and a volunteer hospital chaplain by night, it became obvious how much moving and dying have in common. Underpinning the nature of each event is a latent yet looming fear linked to an emotional, spiritual, and physical letting-go. Moving, or how one prepares to move, can be seen as a reflection of the dying process. The body is a physical dwelling that we will eventually have to leave. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita (2.16),


“Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the non-existent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.”


This body’s being an unendurable home of the soul means that one day we will have to move on from it. While ordinary moving demands we confront our material lives, dying requires confronting our spiritual and emotional lives. Though preparing to move is common sense, most people neglect to see the importance of preparing for death. The reality of our bodily impermanence is a fact kept hidden within our busy lives. It is only when that busyness is interrupted by the timeless miseries of old age, sickness, and death that we might finally acknowledge our body’s temporary nature. But by that point, one is ill prepared to manage the bewildering effects those conditions can have on the untrained mind.


Moving from this body does not have to be a fearful event. It can be a glorious one. The first step in coming to that realization is always acknowledgement. We must acknowledge that our move is impending and worth preparing for. That acknowledgement is the work of detachment. The second step is streamlining and packing. This is the work of discernment. We must decide what is essential to bring with us on this mystifying journey and dispense with all nonessentials. The third step is “the unpack,” and with good preparation it will be enlightening. Preparedness is key to making move-day a joyous one.


Step One: Acknowledgement


We all experience the body’s slow dissolution over the course of a lifetime; the aging process acts as a series of notifications that our moving date is nearing. Yet the fact that we are all destined to move out of our bodies largely goes unacknowledged throughout our lives.


When we accept that we will no longer possess our body or our home, we may begin the subtle process of detachment. By recognizing that our home ownership will expire, we begin to naturally let go of our attachments to it within the mind. The dysfunctional aspects of the home may come into clearer view as we look to leave it behind: “Well, I sure won’t miss this leaky spigot.” Similarly, detachment from the body may be initiated by contemplating its myriad defects and insufficiencies.


Time can be a great assistant to this process. As Krishna declares in the Gita (11.32), “Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds . . . .” As we age, we can see that nothing, not even our physical body, is outside the destructive force of time. As we age, the symptoms that our bodily home will eventually be destroyed become ever more present. The senses even, the old pleasure centers of the body, begin to wane in their potency. Just as we slowly detach from the home we are leaving, so too we can detach from the body we will eventually leave behind.


Awareness is a critical tool that aids this process of detachment. In the Bhagavad-gita the Supreme Lord Krishna offers specific instructions that deepen and expand our awareness while encouraging regulation of our daily habits. Self-regulation is key to expanding our awareness and thereby gaining a deeper understanding of how we relate to our body. If we are constantly indulging in bodily pleasures, our intelligent awareness is diminished. Krishna advises, “Before giving up this present body, if one is able to tolerate the urges of the material senses and check the force of desire and anger, he is well situated and is happy in this world.” (Gita 5.23)


We must be like a mountain that tolerates whatever weather is thrown against it. Krishna assures us that there is no chance of peace in a mind constantly engaged in satisfying the senses. In reacting to the demands of the senses, we deny the subtle messages of the bodily qualities such as nonself, impermanence, and misery. Tolerance enables those subtle messages to flow unimpeded. If we constantly remember those three qualities of the material body, our detachment will manifest effortlessly.


Communication between body and mind must be simplified by reducing distractive engagements. Communication between body and mind is best served by removal of unnecessary sense engagements that may deepen attachments based on false conceptions. By bringing clarity to the bodily relationship, we can see that the gradual degenerations of the body are signs that our move day is imminent. As much as we want the body to be our forever home, it is not.


Finding Our Way Back Home


Krishna explains that our true home transcends the temporal qualities of material existence. He affirms this by declaring, “This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.” (Gita 2.24) We are spirit souls existing eternally within these temporarily manifested bodies for the purpose of finding our way back home, back to Godhead. At some point we strayed too far from our original home and got lost. Now we need to find our way back.


Our reconnection to our true home lies within. To find our way back we need only retrace the misguided steps we took away from it. Every step taken in lust was a step away from our true home, as was every step taken in service of our false ego, every step taken to selfishly gratify the senses, every step taken out of fear, and every step taken out of anger.


Only you know the steps you have taken. Only you can retrace your missteps and find your way back. There are adept movers in this world who can help guide you back home. We must submissively inquire from them and render them service. There is no material burden too great for them to carry. Once our true home is realized, we’re ready for the next step: packing.


Step Two: Packing


The essence of packing for a move is in deciding what should go and what should be left behind – in other words, to discern what is essential and what is inessential. A life lived in preparation for death involves a similar program on the level of the mind and emotions. In packing for a home move, we go through each room of the house, organizing and boxing up our material lives. Preparing for death involves going through each room of our consciousness, intent on cleaning things up. Using discernment, we can see that burdens of the mind such as fear, stress, anxiety, lust, craving, anger, hatred, envy, greed, and delusion need to be left behind. We no longer have any use for them, and they will certainly not serve us where we are going. It can be difficult parting with possessions that appear to be a part of who we are. We’ve even dragged them from one home to another in this life. They’ve been nothing but a burden, and it’s time to get rid of them.


Every moment of our lives may become an opportunity to reorganize and purify our consciousness when we fix our focus away from development of our material lives to development of our spiritual lives. The most effective means of purifying our consciousness in this Age of Kali is the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra. There is no sacrifice more effective in delivering us from material bondage than chanting the holy names. Our faith in the maha-mantra is capable of cultivating kindness, compassion, detachment, equanimity, patience, tolerance, virtue, courage, fearlessness, generosity, forgiveness, gratitude, and attachment to the Supreme Lord – all of the essential qualities one must pack for the move from this body.


The room in the house that typically requires the most attention – but tends to receive the least – is the basement. The basement is always the pivotal area of a home that can make or break a move. It is where rows of shaky shelving house a multitude of plastic tubs filled with relics of a covetous past. The accumulative mass of stuff can be easily overwhelming.


Many people, wrought with hopelessness, end up placing on their movers the burden of sorting it all out (which I do not recommend). If the basement were an analogy for an aspect of the mind, it would be the storehouse consciousness, or, more commonly, the subconscious. It is where we store all the plastic tubs of the experiences, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts we’ve unconsciously accumulated through the gates of our senses. This cache of mental impressions is a critical aspect of mental health and well-being. These impressions can affect how we perceive every aspect of life, including our capacity for decision-making.


We don’t have the luxury of burdening anyone else with our basement issues when it’s time to move from the body. It is our problem alone. Organizing our mental basements can seem like a daunting task, but when we cultivate awareness and detachment from the bodily conception, the natural evolution of consciousness is already underway.


Our first step (acknowledgement) naturally gives rise to the second (discernment) as our consciousness expands without exclusion. We begin to see our stored past with a fresh perception and an acute discernment of what is essential versus inessential to maintaining peace of mind.


Packing can be an opportunity to initiate a change in habit, from one of satisfying a need to possess, to letting go. After all, we can’t take anything material with us in our move from this body: we only take what is in our consciousness. Moving from a material home may require some heavy lifting, but the move from this body should be free from all heaviness.


Step Three: Unpacking


This brings us to the unpack. In a home move, we begin unpacking when we arrive at our new home and are ready to settle into it. Taking shelter of the Supreme Lord provides the warmth and security of a forever home. In a spirit of endless offering, we commit our lives to devotional service as an expression of gratitude for the confidence, courage, fearlessness, joy, and empowerment that the Lord’s shelter provides. Our service is symbolic of unpacking in that it conveys faith in Krishna as the ultimate refuge from the storms of the material world. Devotional service is an expression of our commitment to remaining in the abode of the Lord (as manifest through our service here) no matter what conditions may arise. By engaging with matter in full consciousness of Krishna, with no other motive than to satisfy the Lord of all beings, we take up residence in His eternal abode – here and later “there” – as humble reciprocators of His transcendental love.


After we’ve let go of our illusory home and everything dispensable within it and packed appropriately for our eternal home, it is the time to open our heart and allow our natural qualities of joy, peace, happiness, gratitude, tolerance, equanimity, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, and love to manifest. We feel in harmony with our environment, knowing we’ve taken the appropriate steps to get to where we are. Only Krishna can inspire our complete detachment from the illusions of security in the material world, because real security is realized only in the eternal. How can anything liable to fall apart ever be considered secure?


Even before we leave this body, we can live as if we’ve already arrived in the spiritual kingdom. If we take exclusive shelter of our movers in the form of the guru, and render devotional service, we can experience freedom from material bondage in this very life. This network of temporality captivates our focus, steals our energy, and thwarts our true purpose of reconnecting with our eternal beloved. We mustn’t believe in the false idea of finding our forever home within this body, or this world.


Moving from the body requires us to take nothing from this life except love. The work of unburdening our heart does not have to wait until moving day – it can start now. There is nothing in all this material manifestation that we can depend on at the moment of death. By the Lord’s mercy we will only have our mind. Its ability to hamper or smooth our bodily transition will rest on the work we’ve done to prepare for that moment.


Our move date may not be clear, because it could come at any time, but that may be seen as a benefit. The most miraculous work occurs when we allow ourselves to not know that date. Gurus are akin to the crew that comes to your home to help you pack up all your belongings prior to your move. Gurus aid in the organization and preparation so that everything ends up in its proper place in your new home. They have the experience and knowledge to counsel you on what should be taken and what should be left behind. They help minimize your material burdens if you allow them into your heart.



When we are preparing to move from this body, the guru knows precisely who is going to move us. The supreme mover, Lord Sri Krishna, is the greatest mover in the entire cosmic creation. When we are well packed and ready for our move, we don’t fall victim to anxiety, fear, doubt, or bewilderment; we are instead joyous, equanimous, confident, fearless, and peaceful because we know our mystical mover has finally arrived to carry us back to our forever home.Thomas Mallery is an active member of the ISKCON community in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

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Moving with Grace

Moving with Grace
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Three steps to a permanent move to our real home.


by Thomas Mallery


It was our second of the day. We’d made multiple attempts to reach the customer by phone prior to knocking on the door. On our way to the elevator, the senior man on the crew cynically commented that our customer was probably still asleep and not packed (the ultimate sin against a mover). After we’d banged on the door a few times, it swung open. You never know what will be revealed when that door opens. In this case, a disheveled man was the foreground to a studio apartment in utter disarray. There are varying degrees to being “packed,” but this was complete negligence.


The customer assured us with alcohol-laden breath that he would “get things together.” We hauled on our backs what was sealed and easy to carry. Personal items jostled and shook and spilled out of furniture drawers. We didn’t take the time to wrap one piece of furniture, nor did we care how safely all his belongings were packed as they were carried out the door and indignantly tossed into the truck. Our lack of care was a direct effect of his lack of preparation. Had he been dying – moving out of his body – rather than just moving out of his apartment, his being ill-prepared would have had far more dire consequences.


In my time working as a mover by day and a volunteer hospital chaplain by night, it became obvious how much moving and dying have in common. Underpinning the nature of each event is a latent yet looming fear linked to an emotional, spiritual, and physical letting-go. Moving, or how one prepares to move, can be seen as a reflection of the dying process. The body is a physical dwelling that we will eventually have to leave. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita (2.16),


“Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the non-existent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.”


This body’s being an unendurable home of the soul means that one day we will have to move on from it. While ordinary moving demands we confront our material lives, dying requires confronting our spiritual and emotional lives. Though preparing to move is common sense, most people neglect to see the importance of preparing for death. The reality of our bodily impermanence is a fact kept hidden within our busy lives. It is only when that busyness is interrupted by the timeless miseries of old age, sickness, and death that we might finally acknowledge our body’s temporary nature. But by that point, one is ill prepared to manage the bewildering effects those conditions can have on the untrained mind.


Moving from this body does not have to be a fearful event. It can be a glorious one. The first step in coming to that realization is always acknowledgement. We must acknowledge that our move is impending and worth preparing for. That acknowledgement is the work of detachment. The second step is streamlining and packing. This is the work of discernment. We must decide what is essential to bring with us on this mystifying journey and dispense with all nonessentials. The third step is “the unpack,” and with good preparation it will be enlightening. Preparedness is key to making move-day a joyous one.


Step One: Acknowledgement


We all experience the body’s slow dissolution over the course of a lifetime; the aging process acts as a series of notifications that our moving date is nearing. Yet the fact that we are all destined to move out of our bodies largely goes unacknowledged throughout our lives.


When we accept that we will no longer possess our body or our home, we may begin the subtle process of detachment. By recognizing that our home ownership will expire, we begin to naturally let go of our attachments to it within the mind. The dysfunctional aspects of the home may come into clearer view as we look to leave it behind: “Well, I sure won’t miss this leaky spigot.” Similarly, detachment from the body may be initiated by contemplating its myriad defects and insufficiencies.


Time can be a great assistant to this process. As Krishna declares in the Gita (11.32), “Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds . . . .” As we age, we can see that nothing, not even our physical body, is outside the destructive force of time. As we age, the symptoms that our bodily home will eventually be destroyed become ever more present. The senses even, the old pleasure centers of the body, begin to wane in their potency. Just as we slowly detach from the home we are leaving, so too we can detach from the body we will eventually leave behind.


Awareness is a critical tool that aids this process of detachment. In the Bhagavad-gita the Supreme Lord Krishna offers specific instructions that deepen and expand our awareness while encouraging regulation of our daily habits. Self-regulation is key to expanding our awareness and thereby gaining a deeper understanding of how we relate to our body. If we are constantly indulging in bodily pleasures, our intelligent awareness is diminished. Krishna advises, “Before giving up this present body, if one is able to tolerate the urges of the material senses and check the force of desire and anger, he is well situated and is happy in this world.” (Gita 5.23)


We must be like a mountain that tolerates whatever weather is thrown against it. Krishna assures us that there is no chance of peace in a mind constantly engaged in satisfying the senses. In reacting to the demands of the senses, we deny the subtle messages of the bodily qualities such as nonself, impermanence, and misery. Tolerance enables those subtle messages to flow unimpeded. If we constantly remember those three qualities of the material body, our detachment will manifest effortlessly.


Communication between body and mind must be simplified by reducing distractive engagements. Communication between body and mind is best served by removal of unnecessary sense engagements that may deepen attachments based on false conceptions. By bringing clarity to the bodily relationship, we can see that the gradual degenerations of the body are signs that our move day is imminent. As much as we want the body to be our forever home, it is not.


Finding Our Way Back Home


Krishna explains that our true home transcends the temporal qualities of material existence. He affirms this by declaring, “This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.” (Gita 2.24) We are spirit souls existing eternally within these temporarily manifested bodies for the purpose of finding our way back home, back to Godhead. At some point we strayed too far from our original home and got lost. Now we need to find our way back.


Our reconnection to our true home lies within. To find our way back we need only retrace the misguided steps we took away from it. Every step taken in lust was a step away from our true home, as was every step taken in service of our false ego, every step taken to selfishly gratify the senses, every step taken out of fear, and every step taken out of anger.


Only you know the steps you have taken. Only you can retrace your missteps and find your way back. There are adept movers in this world who can help guide you back home. We must submissively inquire from them and render them service. There is no material burden too great for them to carry. Once our true home is realized, we’re ready for the next step: packing.


Step Two: Packing


The essence of packing for a move is in deciding what should go and what should be left behind – in other words, to discern what is essential and what is inessential. A life lived in preparation for death involves a similar program on the level of the mind and emotions. In packing for a home move, we go through each room of the house, organizing and boxing up our material lives. Preparing for death involves going through each room of our consciousness, intent on cleaning things up. Using discernment, we can see that burdens of the mind such as fear, stress, anxiety, lust, craving, anger, hatred, envy, greed, and delusion need to be left behind. We no longer have any use for them, and they will certainly not serve us where we are going. It can be difficult parting with possessions that appear to be a part of who we are. We’ve even dragged them from one home to another in this life. They’ve been nothing but a burden, and it’s time to get rid of them.


Every moment of our lives may become an opportunity to reorganize and purify our consciousness when we fix our focus away from development of our material lives to development of our spiritual lives. The most effective means of purifying our consciousness in this Age of Kali is the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra. There is no sacrifice more effective in delivering us from material bondage than chanting the holy names. Our faith in the maha-mantra is capable of cultivating kindness, compassion, detachment, equanimity, patience, tolerance, virtue, courage, fearlessness, generosity, forgiveness, gratitude, and attachment to the Supreme Lord – all of the essential qualities one must pack for the move from this body.


The room in the house that typically requires the most attention – but tends to receive the least – is the basement. The basement is always the pivotal area of a home that can make or break a move. It is where rows of shaky shelving house a multitude of plastic tubs filled with relics of a covetous past. The accumulative mass of stuff can be easily overwhelming.


Many people, wrought with hopelessness, end up placing on their movers the burden of sorting it all out (which I do not recommend). If the basement were an analogy for an aspect of the mind, it would be the storehouse consciousness, or, more commonly, the subconscious. It is where we store all the plastic tubs of the experiences, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts we’ve unconsciously accumulated through the gates of our senses. This cache of mental impressions is a critical aspect of mental health and well-being. These impressions can affect how we perceive every aspect of life, including our capacity for decision-making.


We don’t have the luxury of burdening anyone else with our basement issues when it’s time to move from the body. It is our problem alone. Organizing our mental basements can seem like a daunting task, but when we cultivate awareness and detachment from the bodily conception, the natural evolution of consciousness is already underway.


Our first step (acknowledgement) naturally gives rise to the second (discernment) as our consciousness expands without exclusion. We begin to see our stored past with a fresh perception and an acute discernment of what is essential versus inessential to maintaining peace of mind.


Packing can be an opportunity to initiate a change in habit, from one of satisfying a need to possess, to letting go. After all, we can’t take anything material with us in our move from this body: we only take what is in our consciousness. Moving from a material home may require some heavy lifting, but the move from this body should be free from all heaviness.


Step Three: Unpacking


This brings us to the unpack. In a home move, we begin unpacking when we arrive at our new home and are ready to settle into it. Taking shelter of the Supreme Lord provides the warmth and security of a forever home. In a spirit of endless offering, we commit our lives to devotional service as an expression of gratitude for the confidence, courage, fearlessness, joy, and empowerment that the Lord’s shelter provides. Our service is symbolic of unpacking in that it conveys faith in Krishna as the ultimate refuge from the storms of the material world. Devotional service is an expression of our commitment to remaining in the abode of the Lord (as manifest through our service here) no matter what conditions may arise. By engaging with matter in full consciousness of Krishna, with no other motive than to satisfy the Lord of all beings, we take up residence in His eternal abode – here and later “there” – as humble reciprocators of His transcendental love.


After we’ve let go of our illusory home and everything dispensable within it and packed appropriately for our eternal home, it is the time to open our heart and allow our natural qualities of joy, peace, happiness, gratitude, tolerance, equanimity, forgiveness, kindness, compassion, and love to manifest. We feel in harmony with our environment, knowing we’ve taken the appropriate steps to get to where we are. Only Krishna can inspire our complete detachment from the illusions of security in the material world, because real security is realized only in the eternal. How can anything liable to fall apart ever be considered secure?


Even before we leave this body, we can live as if we’ve already arrived in the spiritual kingdom. If we take exclusive shelter of our movers in the form of the guru, and render devotional service, we can experience freedom from material bondage in this very life. This network of temporality captivates our focus, steals our energy, and thwarts our true purpose of reconnecting with our eternal beloved. We mustn’t believe in the false idea of finding our forever home within this body, or this world.


Moving from the body requires us to take nothing from this life except love. The work of unburdening our heart does not have to wait until moving day – it can start now. There is nothing in all this material manifestation that we can depend on at the moment of death. By the Lord’s mercy we will only have our mind. Its ability to hamper or smooth our bodily transition will rest on the work we’ve done to prepare for that moment.


Our move date may not be clear, because it could come at any time, but that may be seen as a benefit. The most miraculous work occurs when we allow ourselves to not know that date. Gurus are akin to the crew that comes to your home to help you pack up all your belongings prior to your move. Gurus aid in the organization and preparation so that everything ends up in its proper place in your new home. They have the experience and knowledge to counsel you on what should be taken and what should be left behind. They help minimize your material burdens if you allow them into your heart.



When we are preparing to move from this body, the guru knows precisely who is going to move us. The supreme mover, Lord Sri Krishna, is the greatest mover in the entire cosmic creation. When we are well packed and ready for our move, we don’t fall victim to anxiety, fear, doubt, or bewilderment; we are instead joyous, equanimous, confident, fearless, and peaceful because we know our mystical mover has finally arrived to carry us back to our forever home.Thomas Mallery is an active member of the ISKCON community in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.