SEEKING AND HOMECOMING

-ONE ROAD, IN TWO-NESS WALKED-

SEEKING AND HOMECOMING

"for the soul feels that this thirst of love is a loving thirst"

                                                           Leonard Cohen

We do seek. And we get often lost and tired. All this is nevertheless true. At times we don't know what we are seeking, and where we head towards. And we become weary and tired and old. And the questioning stays with us. Maybe we dare ask in solitude: 'Have I wandered and found? Have I traveled well? Was I on my path or following other's companion's steps?' And this is how we make step after step. We live in this not knowing, but what else is there than to live it?

The path is moving at the same time with our walk on it. There are traces, and there is movement. Our exploration is supported by the metamorphosis that can happen at any time, and thus we reshape our being in this continuous unfolding by revealing facets once hidden, not known. Is it easy? Not quite. But we can glimpse a feeling of trust in the process. The more we stay there, the more we feel some ground. And more we walk...

How did I find this seeking like, usually? It's hard to stop at one shape; every human encounters this in a different way. However, as for me, I realised that I give it a name from the place where I am in that moment in my process of understanding. From the place where I am in my journey. It's hard to tell...but I have this analogy in my analytic mind that wants to bring in some way a sort of clarity.

Seeking for me feels new every time, like seasons.

• In the spring of my soul I sense it as - desire, excitement, emergency.

• In the summer of my calling, I named it - appetite, vitality.

• But only in the autumn of my being the seeking was hard to confront - the nostalgia, the dullness, the constant desire to belong.

• And the winter of my spirit has left me surrendering to this new form of searching which I called - grief, void, hallow, longing.

All of them being met constantly in a form or another, or in my deepest darkest fog not knowing how to name the entanglement of all of this complex experience. I believe us humans, we get lost in our seasons...we get hurt and we suffer with or without clear knowledge. And we meet the return point...sometimes it insists, others we lose it in our "pre-occupied"* lives. And thus, we struggle in something that feels lonely, misunderstood, in an emptiness that we desire constantly to fill with something. Something that's missing but we still not have the courage to begin the process of finding out what exactly that "thing" is. Some pursue an endless marathon, others stay put until they become completely numb; but there are also those who choose. And they get in touch with their power of will. Their birthright. That turn-point can be the scariest decision of one's life, but so freeing. And from that moment on, nothing ever tastes the same or can go back to... what, actually?

It's not backwards the sense of the walk. It's one step put in front of another.

But then, HOMECOMING, THE RETURN, THE UN-LEARNING, are just stories? What were all these voyagers talking about?

About the INWARD TRAVEL OF THE JOURNEYER.

The arrow is not left or right; neither up nor down. The path has included all the traffic signs, all directions, shapes, and forms. It's not linear, it's holographic. ALL IS INCLUDED. In sufism, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi Rumi mentions "THE ONE WHO RETURNS" as GOD. The sufi master used this naming in his exploring for the most part. I carried this with me for most of my years without knowing what I am actually aiming to meet. It felt like a heaviness that's not being released intentionally; otherwise, what was the weight of the body that wanders? And what if it is no anchor apart from this heaviness? What was there to carry, to gravitate around, to exist for? What was the actual centre of gravity?

The timeless showed me in a very subtle way that this heaviness, when being included, it holds the seeking of an unfading soul. That heaviness in its preciousness meets the impermanence, and within this great reminder our CHOICE. The "choiceless choice"* that does not impose, does not limit, nor sets conditions. That choice that offers the gift of BEING. Of HOMECOMING. Of RETURNING. Of UNLEARNING.

After we include the separateness of our "choiceless choice" and we feel this same-ness in our being, all that we encounter opens the space of curiosity. CURIOSITY - as the QUALITY, the FABRIC, that sustains all THAT IS. Curiosity, the grandiose quality that brings you home. Curiosity that meets "THE ONE WHO RETURNS". The curiosity that does not oppose the seeking, but sustains its vitality.

The curiosity that makes possible for the SEEKING to meet the HOMECOMING, not as separate worlds only but in a communion that brings space for ALL TO HAPPEN. FOR ALL TO EXIST. FOR ALL TO BE ALLOWED: the embrace, the comparing, the resistance, whichever form of expression and manifestation.

In a world where the unhealed ego is attached to the idea of a fragmented Reality and thinks that it's enough, THE SEEKING and THE HOMECOMING are being seen as opposites only. That fragmented Reality is being presented from a restricted dual perspective, where these two opposites represent different landscapes that can never cooperate. And so, the seeker wanders, confused and with a heart that suffers a daily relocation on one side or another, without healthy roots on a broad foundation. And this aches, exhausts and loses opportunity. This keeps us pre-occupied in the jumping or the taking side to one or another, when the home is everywhere.

The HOMECOMING is all around.

Can you stay a bit and try to feel it? Here and there, everywhere. Present in all things....in NONDUALITY.

Dear you,

Let this meeting happen.

Let it be,

All-pervading.  

***as phrased by Jason Shulman, creator and founder of Society of Souls, the School for Nondual healing and Awakening. More about his work can be found at The Foundation for Nonduality (www.nonduality.us.com)