Home
Every once in a while it feels like there is some metaphysical prodding that makes me go deeper into The Questions. For a very long time it was the usual: why are we here? What are we supposed to do while we’re here? What happens when we die?
I really can’t locate the moment when I shifted my attention in life from buying things from Pottery Barn and setting pretty Thanksgiving tables (nothing wrong with these things, it’s all about intensity of focus, as I’ve learned) to wrestling with existential questions. I do know that I have found immense satisfaction and that I’ve conjured some pretty saucy characters along the way as I’ve attempted to figure out things that are a tad more meaningful than ... napkin rings or folded?
Conjured I use intentionally because I believe wholeheartedly that we create our world and that people arrive to help us on our way when we are on our way. Teachers of all shapes and sized and flavors make their way to us in what I can only imagine to be a fabulous comedy of errors as witnessed from the other side.
Recently my curiosities seemed to have taken a deeper dive when I started wondering about something that feels really big. Let me see if I can harvest words to explain. It goes like this:
If there is a moving source, an Originator, which some call God but which is also called many other things,
and consciousness, individual or collective, is created at some point, emanating from this Originator
and consciousness then goes through many many many many enfleshed iterations (and maybe some other experiences that are outside of the one we know here on this planet)
and in those incarnations faces challenges, trials, engages in relationships and vocational experiences, etc
and it turns out that we learn the most through our challenges, our trials, our darkest hours. A beach vacation with the fam is awesome, but our greatest moments of awakening come when the car is sliding off the icy road, when the good friend gets the diagnosis, when the kid needs surgery, when Mom is in hospice …
We learn the most through our challenges, that’s how we move up the spiritual food chain.
And that’s the whole point of everything: spiritual evolution.
Higher and higher, wider and further until we return to the Originator.
When this first came into focus, this circle of return, I was a little mad. Not so much because it took me so freaking long to see this … but because it didn’t make sense. What is the point? I kept asking myself. What is the freaking point of ALL OF THIS BULLSHIT here in this weird world if we’re just trying to get back to where we started from? Home.
My whole life I feel like I’ve been yearning for a home I couldn’t describe. I thought it was because I didn’t have grandparents, aunts, uncles … I didn’t grow up with the usual line-up of relatives who could tell me stories about the past. So I’ve been a gypsy, moving, traveling, testing the world, a Goldilocks who never gets to Just Right.
But now I understand more about the idea of home and the yearning all of us feel and cannot name.
Home, capital H and not because it comes at the start of a sentence. Because it comes at the start of everything.
So, hold on, I was mad. Let’s go back there for a sec.
If the whole purpose of all of these incarnations, all of this hard and ridiculous life thing is to get back to the starting point … what is all this about?
I thought about this for days. I walked it out, talked it out, asked a couple of friends who are deep thinkers. Why why why? Why war, children murdered, women raped, landscaped charred, why taxes, tiny stickers on every piece of fruit? Why do we eat food that isn’t really food, why is love so hard, why landfills, why addiction … WHY THE F WHY???
Why do we have to go through any of this if the whole point is just to get back to the beginning? Why the whole freaking thing in the first place?
And then I was driving, which is when all important and good thoughts come my way, when I’m in motion, and the beauty and simplicity of it struck me like firefly-lit night in June.
We are riddled with distractions in this world.
We know that love is the answer. We know how we are supposed to behave: with kindness, honesty, fairness. We know we are supposed to forgive endlessly and love each other even though none of us are all that lovable. We know we are supposed to tend to the needs of the world: feed our neighbors, show up when someone is lonely or scared.
At the heart of life sit the simplest things. Insanely elegant in their simplicity: kindness, love, fairness, generosity, forgiveness.
And yet.
And yet.
If we want to free ourselves from the circle, the cycles of incarnation, then we have to live a certain way, we know this. And the sooner we do this, the sooner we will be free, and back Home.
Why are we here? To learn this and to live it, sooner, and with gusto. It is profoundly simple and also very, very hard. In a world that wants us to own a Mercedes station wagon and amass a big, fat 401K. It is very, very hard to step outside of that mindset of more, best, winner, gorgeous, thin, owner … into one of humble, graceful simplicity.
The world is showing us these days just how awful this place can be. Living here is, on a good day, pretty OK. There are fleeting moments of transcendence, and I guarantee none of them happen when you’re buying something. They always happen in nature and with people we love.
We understand. We know.
I didn’t crack any code, I am not the first person to kind of Get It. I’m just a soul whose intentions are good (someday I’m gonna write an entire story in song lyrics).
Every day, all day: kindness, humility, forgiveness, love, fairness, respect … Freedom. Try like hell not to let the razzle dazzle sidetrack you. I hope to see you back at Home sooner than later.