Home - What comes to mind when you think of home? A couch in front of a fire, the kitchen with smells of food wafting through the air, a big comfy bed with layers of blankets and pillows; family and friends all gathered in the living room or running about in the back yard?
Home is intended to offer us nurturing; a place where we can find the strength and support that will carry us through life; a kind of base camp that we can always return to when in need of replenishing.
But how many of us can honestly say that our childhood home was such an ideal place or even a safe haven? For many adults, childhood homes actually haunt with memories of pain and confusion or perhaps sibling rivalry or abusive parents.
When our childhood home has been a negative experience, it is no surprise that often times we recreate similar realities later in life, realities which continue the conditioned cycles given to us by our family and ancestors.
But then comes along a little statement that in a flash can change everything: home is where the heart is. Could you repeat that please?
Sure, home is where the heart is.
Where the heart is? I'm not sure I remember the last time I really felt my heart. I think I was three and I was playing out back amongst the bushes. Everything was so alive and giving. I couldn't help but feel happy. But then I walked into the house and was quickly screamed at for bringing a trail of mud along with me. And when I wanted to show everyone how big I was and attempted to pour my own glass of water, which then slipped out of my hands and shattered on the floor, all I heard and felt was anger and angst.
Home is where the heart is… Where is my home? Where is my heart?
The mystic path, no matter the denomination, often speaks of the need for the young adult to venture away from his home and family, beyond his known limits and conceptions and journey forth through an elaborate and ultimately empowering initiation in order to reconnect to their true home, the home that forever resides within their heart.
This path of initiation leads the initiate first into his or her subconscious and memory to discover all that had been laid down before him. As he travels he comes to discover the beliefs and perceptions he has taken on and is offered the opportunity to consciously choose what he would wish, hence forth, to believe and create in this world.
By doing so, in a sense, he destroys his prior home only to rebuild one based on his or her own principles and own truth.
But how many of us were ever invited and ushered onto this initiatory path? For those of us who don't set forth to find our own home, our own way to live life, we can be left clinging to a misperception of home, one based on limitation and fear.
What if our parents didn't grow up feeling abundant and passed the belief of lack and struggle onto us? What if our parents passed on the beliefs of riches beyond measure but were warped with lack of intimacy or warmth? What if our parents weren't even alive?
Therefore it comes down to us to boldly awaken to our path homeward.
Empowered with choice we must create homes that do align with our hearts. Not to agonize over how we suffered in our childhood homes (according to the movie, The Secret - a staggering 85% of people come from dysfunctional families) but rather, with hope, to find the home that nourishes us because there we will experience positive virtues like truth, love, compassion and tranquility.
It is my belief that to find your home and hear your heart, you don't need to make a huge physical journey or a whole lot of noise and effort. It is enough to be still. Stillness is the doorway home, and as the quotation goes: Be Still and Know that I am God.
It is in the quiet that we can perceive truth, and that which is beyond illusion.
It is in the quiet that we can open to our divinity and communicate with the knowing that permeates all things. This is the path into the heart… the path home. It begins and continues and ends and continues by means of the stillness.
Home is where the heart is. And I would say that the true heart is everywhere. For love dwells in the heart and I believe that love permeates all things, but again, to perceive it we must hush the noisy, aching, yearning, wanting, fearing, wheeling and dealing mind.
If we continue to perceive this world through the shattered lens of the mind which inherently believes in separation, home will always seem a choice, trip, date, seminar or guru away. But through the grace of the all pervading heart, all is whole, perfect, and complete. Now that is what I call a warm home to come into.
So, dear friends, welcome home… in fact, you never left… it was just a simple mistake taken way out of proportion… like placing your hand in front of a projector… what you see is a large menacing shadow, and yet, it is only a shadow and not at all real.
So take time to relax and open to the quiet. Here and now. Shshsh… can you hear it? A tiny still voice beckons from within. Come home she whispers. Welcome home.