Coming Home to Yourself
Discovering a place where you always belong.
“Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it? if not the intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
In painful or challenging times, whether you’re feeling distracted, stuck, or plain heartbroken, the Buddhist notion of “Coming home to yourself” offers a pathway to insight, healing and wholeness.
At its essence, the expression describes the experience of remembering who you truly are and finding peace, refuge and belonging within, no matter your external circumstances.
We can come home to ourselves just by being present right here and now; returning to our body, feeling our breath, paying attention to our physical sensations, and welcoming all of our emotions. The key is to do all of this with a loving, non-judgmental attitude. We have to drop the story or “add-on” for why we think things are the way they are; drop all of the exhaustive thinking and worrying about the future or the past. Then, we’re able to just be with ourselves.
Another way of “coming home to yourself” is by experiencing the Divine dimension of your being—as something so much more than your thoughts and stories, persona or personal identity. This type of homecoming often follows the first—when we are truly present and open, we’re able to touch into an experience of our True Nature as energetic beings, connected to the sacred and Divine source of all life.
“Coming Home,” then, enables us to rest in our being-ness and feel held by our oneness, which ultimately leads us to experience a deep sense of belonging—to ourselves and to the Divine.
We can practice coming home to ourselves through meditation and mindfulness exercises. However, we can also experience the feeling at homeness in the day to day. Think for example of those numinous moments before nature when you have felt connected to some larger energetic force, and you just knew on a deep level that "you are that." You understood intrinsically that you belong.
I often experience a feeling of coming home to myself after a good hearty laugh or even a good cry. Having felt my emotions fully, I’m left feeling “soft” in my body, and a refreshing quality of openness presence arises naturally.
When we “come home,” we are able to taste our intrinsic wholeness and natural openness and to realize our “true nature” as boundless, sacred and Divine. We discover an inner refuge that is always available to us.
In addition to being deeply nourishing, coming home to ourselves enables us to move beyond the thoughts, judgments, and habits, that normally prevent us from accessing our inner wisdom. We’re able to listen to our inner voice (call it the “True Self,” or the “Soul”) that has valuable information for us about what we need in order to live with greater authenticity and purpose.
Most of us spend to so much time trying to find what we need “out there.” It is beautiful and empowering to realize that we can find peace, belonging, and answers to our deepest questions, just by coming home to ourselves. Everything we need is already within us.