To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you,

Be released.

May your fears yield

Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you,

Blossom into a future,

Graced with love.

                        John O'Donohue

One of the greatest gifts we can receive in this life is being dissatisfied.

Contrary to what most of us have heard and learned, being disillusioned and disappointed can be the quiet still voice beckoning us to question our lives; it can be a wake-up call to explore a lifetime of inquiry– the privilege and the quest of discovering, and then living from, the root of our deepest longing desires.  In asking ourselves what we so fiercely hunger for, we open ourselves to the experience of being – simple and effortless being – the very thing our heart and soul yearns for.  

We open ourselves to the river of our own unique, effortless beingness.  To the desire to be connected . . . at one with . . . every other being we encounter.  To feel at home on this earth and in our bodies.  To unabashedly love, to know what it is like to cherish ourselves, our life, all life.  

There are no guidebooks for this – no one size fits all – no one else that can fully or truly know our path into becoming – each one of us is the only one that can respond to this demand; the life that is given to us for us to realize. 

The grief for some inexpressible loss we feel, the sorrow we taste and the fear we are oh-so-familiar with sings out to let us know we are out of touch with our deepest longings and when we allow the welling up of disappointments and disillusionments to get our fully open and attentive focus, we are brought closer to our sweet and tender selves, allowing our hearts to open out in ever deepening trust; allowing our intuition, to whatever degree has long been restrained or even out of reach,  to flower into action, and allowing the weight of worry and angst to lift and lift and lift. 

To become the being of your deepest burning desires is a marvel. If you can find a creative and dynamic harmony between your essential Self and your life, you will have found something infinitely and authentically priceless. This gift of harmony, our birthright, will simply bubble up and out of you, without any effort, easily touching every aspect and morsel of your daily life.  A gift of harmony that automatically fans out beyond you, often experienced as compassion, kindness and ease.  

Who amongst us has not looked outside ourselves for confidence, for harmony – if I were an accomplished flutist, was thinner, not a people-pleaser, more adventurous. . . then I would be happy, content and feel good about myself. Then I would be free to be myself.  Who amongst us has not wished away depression, anxiety and despair, convinced our lives would be more worthwhile living if and when we didn’t feel so badly?  Who amongst us has not looked outside ourselves, persuaded there is some safe and secure shield from life’s hardships, some warm blanket and hot meal that would, forever, keep us from harm? Who amongst us has not been convinced circumstances and/or someone is the cause of our unhappiness or happiness? 

Turn inward instead and listen. Listen with every cell in your body. Listen, thoroughly wanting to hear. Our inner lives are astonishing and vast and mysterious and infinite.  We contain the enormity of presence within us, as much as we are held within its deep stillness.  Each one of us is an individual authentic and profound expression of conscious beingness – regardless of what form that expression is taking, regardless of our opinion or feeling about it.  

Be open to the powers that be – the mysterious and ecstatic flow of life, begging for expression – expression that only you can set in motion. 

If you are not feeling it go deeper – The stillness of presence, the enormity of what you truly are, is sitting inside yourself.

Learn what you are, not through another but by watching yourself.  Openly . . . heart, mind, gut and fists open. . . watch yourself.  Not in a condemning way, not falling into the trap of believing something is wrong with you, somehow you are not alright, something about you needs fixing or to be different.  Watch yourself without any form of reaction or resistance and watch the very act of neutral noticing burn away the foolishness, the illusions one has about oneself. 

It is quite a revelation to discover that the condition you wanted to avoid is the exact same condition you find yourself in and that suffering is not a sign that something is wrong with you.  It is a revelation that the prison wasn’t the place or the condition or the circumstances, but the perspective; the most radical change happens within your exact same life.  The biggest and most profound shift happens not by becoming richer or more accomplished or not being depressed or . . . the really big one . . . being more certain or pain free; it happens by waking up in the exact same life. 

Living in the midst of your day-to-day relationships, responsibilities, likes, dislikes, comings and goings, is a rich, rich soil.  All these can become the very means for the purification of your heart.  

By finding ourselves we become our Self.  

No reasoning will describe this or capture it; nor will discussing it or explaining it. Our minds simply cannot comprehend this; more often than not our minds will lead us on a wild goose chase trying to understand and finagle. 

The discovery lies in the choice of experiencing it and being lost in the simplicity of it. 

What appears to matter is the profound experience of having journeyed through mountains and deep seas to come back to where you started; your own self. Having touched or fallen into the vastness of your true nature, your unique instrument of the totality is now a more conscious self that is oh-so-real, openly transparent; a self that is more familiar and accepting of how it ticks, no longer disconnected from other selves, a self which is attuned and alive . . . vibrating and quivering as life itself. . . at-one-with the tuning note of the infinite vastness that it now knows itself to be.  

Give up the desire for suffering.

Know yourself to be life itself, all of it.  Know yourself as silence and experience yourself as an expression of that silence. Discover your very own sweet expression of the all, and celebrate that quirky and unique, god-given creation. 

It does seem to be that love is looking at Itself with love!