I’d like to share with you a knowing that revealed itself the other day. It happened in an instant of heart opening to a deep pain that welled up, and that felt very, very familiar. The pain had covered over the knowing, and it took being willing to feel the pain fully, to be totally present with it, before the knowing could emerge in its full force and its full clarity.
The pain was, in its essence, the pain of being disconnected from love. The pain of losing my very being, which I knew to be Love. My whole life was suffused by this pain. The pain covered over the knowing of Love, until this knowing started shining through again, revealing itself in many ways, over and over. The way the pain expressed in my life was as depression, emotional disconnect, and as a total focus on the mind. The depression was excruciating in my teens and lifted somewhat in my twenties. Helped by many years of psychotherapy and emotional healing in my thirties, I started opening back up emotionally. My love affair with the mind slowly gave way to a life lived more fully at all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and eventually even spiritual.
In this moment of feeling the essence of the pain that had come to visit, I also knew the innocence of heart that the pain had obscured for so long. The innocence of heart that only knew Love, the purity of Love, the fragrance of Love. The innocence that knew itself to be that Love, and that had always known itself to be that Love. All the emotional healing, all the spiritual searching, my love affair with Love: all were part of the homecoming of the prodigal daughter who had lost her way in this human life, and who, by grace, realized that she needed to make her way back home.
The path home is a path that plays out over the life span of our human life. Homecoming never stops, it deepens endlessly. It reveals ever new ways that we have left home, that we have lost ourselves in the conditioning – called maya in the Eastern understanding – that was layered over and obscured the innocence of the heart. The heart will call us back. It’s our ticket and our compass to find our way back home. It’s totally trustworthy. If you hear it calling, through pain or through glimpses of its different flavors, don’t turn away. Let it reveal itself to you ever more fully. Let it guide you home.
The path home is a path that plays out over the life span of our human life. Homecoming never stops, it deepens endlessly. It reveals ever new ways that we have left home, that we have lost ourselves in the conditioning – called maya in the Eastern understanding – that was layered over and obscured the innocence of the heart. The heart will call us back. It’s our ticket and our compass to find our way back home. It’s totally trustworthy. If you hear it calling, through pain or through glimpses of its different flavors, don’t turn away. Let it reveal itself to you ever more fully. Let it guide you home.
PS: To find out about the upcoming online retreat on Awakening in the Heart with Jon Bernie, Will Pye, Unmani, and myself >> CLICK HERE or on the event poster.
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