Going Home

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Our spiritual quest, often referred to as the Inner Journey Home, encompasses a profound exploration of one's inner self in search of a place of ultimate belonging and contentment. Home, in this context, is not a physical space but an inner sanctuary within our being where we find safety, relaxation, peace, and comfort. It is a space beyond the chaos of the external world, allowing us to reconnect with our True Nature. 

 

Some spiritual traditions propose that ‘home’ represents a return to our state of innocent existence prior to our human birth—a cosmic home one might say. Moreover, the age-old adage, "home is where the heart is," encapsulates the idea that the recognition of our true home is found as we learn to shift our attention from the head to the heart.

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Years ago at  a Sufi Conference in North Carolina we were fortunate to enjoy an informal and intimate lunch with Maata Lynn Barron, a very humble and gentle sufi mystic. Aside from her quiet presence I particularly remember how she characterized her spiritual journey by saying "I was just trying to get home, or I could also say oneness. There was a deep, deep desire to go home." 

 

This raises the question, Can we recognize in ourselves this simple desire to go home? And, isn't it obvious that in order to have such a desire we must already know, or at least taste what it is that we desire? In other words, the sense of Home (or God, or Reality, or Oneness, etc.) is already subtly known within each of us. The poetry of sufism often refers to one's "longing for the Beloved" and I will suggest that this is the same as our desire to go home; home as God! 

 

Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating — lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.

~ Eckhart Tolle

 

The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, "Why am I here? What is life? Who am I? Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions. 

~ Jean Klein 

 

On the other side of life there’s only life; death is simply a doorway  through which each of us must pass on our journey home.

~ Alberto Villoldo

 

The only activity the separate self is really engaged in is the discovery of peace, freedom and happiness. It first tries to do this by uniting with objects, substances, states and relationships, but at some point it gets to the end of that adventure. It realizes that it can never be fully satisfied by objective experience, and that is when the real journey back home begins. 

~ Rupert Spira 

 

The act of trying to find the way home is what convinces us we are lost. We're not lost, we're not alone,& we've never even left home. 

~ Rumi 

 

You can't long for what you don’t know. The concept is what you say it is. I was just one "graced"—to use that term—with not knowing there was such thing as "awakening". I thought that suicide was the only way out—that it was my opinion. It's a homesickness. A HOMESICKNESS! The longing for Home. l used to lie in bed for so many of those seven years and just wail, “I want to go home!” I thought that was suicide but inside of me that's all I knew. It was a purity—"I want to go Home.” But I didn't believe in a heaven or a hell. I wanted to go home, so in my innocence and ignorance, I had it right. That’s how I know the longing for oneself is a perfectly natural thing. Take away the word “enlightenment"— because I wouldn't know what that meant, and maybe no one else does—take away the word "enlightenment," and go home. Go Home—meet it there. To the Heart. Back to itself. It's always there; you know that from The Work. It's always there—always. There's no time you can ask the heart that it won't give you that innocent purity—full-blown right in your face.

~ Byron Katie

 

Throw away the begging bowl. Begging bowl is desire, intention, hope. So, if you get rid of desire and hope, you are back home. Instantly, you are back home. Instantly, we become One. All is One, and 'It' is all. There is no doubt about it. In not going anywhere, I am everywhere. 

~ Papaji 

 

As long as you are,  doer, whether doing or not doing, thinking or not thinking, meditating or not meditating, this you is No closer to home than it was on the day It left home.

~ Wu Hsin

 

Where is your attention in this very moment? If you're attending to thoughts, let these words be a beacon to come home to yourself. What a blessing that your life can be the living vigil to that which is the ground of your life! 

~ Gangaji 

 

When I allow it, it is, when I avoid it, it is. It requires no effort, demands no standards and holds no preferences. Being timeless it sees no path to tread, no debt to pay. Because it acknowledges no right or wrong, neither does it recognize judgement or guilt. Its love is absolutely unconditional. It simply watches with clarity, compassion and delight as I move out for my return. It is my birthright. It is my home. It is already that which I am. 

~ Tony Parsons 

 

Life, the formless, form and fragrance, knows exactly what it is doing. Life is pure, unfiltered Intelligence flowing as whatever shape is now appearing. It is alive and it is all calling us Home. Do you hear the grain of sand calling your name? It says, “Love.” Do you sense the truth of it? If not, lean in and ‘listen’ again -  this time with the whole of your being.

~ Dhyana Stanley

 

Beyond ambition, beyond attainment, is home. Contentment, without content; peace, uncaused. 

~ A. H. Almaas 

 

Beloved, Self is your real home. Mind and body have taken the journey, but the real home place is your own heart. 

~ Mooji

 

All that apparently manifests — the world, the life story,  the hypnotic dream of separation the search for home, is the one appearing as two, the nothing appearing as everything, the Absolute appearing as the particular.

~ Tony Parsons

 

Rumi says, “Whatever brought me here must take me home.” Now I ask you, What is home? How much distance to home? How many kilometers from home are you? Inquiring like this, one finds the home that is distanceless and inseparable from one’s own Self.

~ Mooji

 

Whatever is going on, you can discover home. Then it's not a practice. It's alive. It's here. Then meditation, chanting, prayer, singing, sitting, dancing, living, is in honor of that. 

~ Gangaji

 

In Truth, there is neither any path nor anyone to go anywhere on it. There is nothing to attain, nothing to achieve, because without knowing it you are already Home.

~ Ramesh Balsekar

 

Crying is the song of the self recognizing home. 

~ Byron Katie 

 

We can be aware of our Source of Being. The illusions of the mind may hold our love for a time, but to love Love itself, we must turn within. The soul's longing for its true Home is the guide to finding this Love. Follow the lover of the Beloved back upstream to your Source. 

~ St. John of the Cross 

 

Just like exhausted children in the back seat of a car on a long drive to a new home, our thoughts keep on asking, 'are we there yet? are we nearly home? how soon can we rest?', and life, in its infinite patience, keeps on reminding us that we are already home, that we never left home in the first place, that even when we move home, our true home, the ever-present inner stillness, never moves. In the midst of movement, total calm. So shhhh now, rest your little heads, sleepy ones.... 

~ Jeff Foster 

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How much more time will you spend at a wayside inn? 

Don't you want to go home? 

How exquisite it all is! 

One is, in his own Self, the wanderer, the exile, 

the home-coming and the home... 

oneself is all that there is.

~ Sri Anandamayi Ma

 

Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.

~ Lao Tzu

 

When we stop trying to change

duality into oneness

we are home

~ Stuart Schwartz 

 

There comes a point in satsang 

when there is no other, 

no teacher, no student, no friend 

... just one being looking at itself, 

one being recognizing its innermost. 

In this moment, 

everything that obscures truth 

simply dissolves 

... and all that is left is 

unbounded, uncontainable, untamable love. 

Finally, we are home. 

And you see 

that you never had left home 

in the first place, 

you have always been here. 

Nowhere else to go,

nothing else to find, 

just this. 

~ Amoda Maa Jeevan

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It's important to realize that the spiritual journey never really ends. Get used to never arriving. Make the journey your home. Find the One Infinite Creator in each expanding moment. Be happy now.

~ Bentinho Massaro

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Then in answer to my prayer
or more truthfully my scream,
my beloved self appeared,
come to wake me from this dream.

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And with a diamond voice declared:
“Home is not some distant star,
or some heavenly reward
that your days are marching toward
but the truth of who you are–

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An awareness so immense
it holds all of this inside…”
As she spoke my mind fell still
but my tears would not subside.

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And from the arms of grace, I knew
that all suffering would cease
if we could yield to this embrace,
if we just trusted in this peace. 

~ Kirtana lyrics from "I said that I would sing"

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