After living in a foreign country for over 28 years, I thought about moving back home to the USA. But where is home, really? Have you ever wondered where your true residence is? Is your real home where you are right now, or perhaps the city you grew up in, or the country you were born in? Where is your true home? Looking more closely we can really see that neither of these are correct.
I've lost count of how many times I've moved in my life. My entire childhood was marked by constant uprooting. Time and time again, I was uprooted from different so-called homes. I have most recently moved to another home after the dissolution of a 20 year marriage. Divorce in and of itself is uprooting as well. Over half of the population in our part of the world goes through this kind of transition. When you think about it, we live in a state of constant change and metamorphosis. It's all we do; we evolve and change.
We are basically a bag of conceptions and habits. We gather all our memories based on our images from the past in our own minds. We walk around and call things home based on what we have as a concept within our minds. We call our current location our home. We say this house is my home.
Whether we call our current place home or reserve the term "home" for an image of our hometown, it doesn't matter. The point is we are looking for something to make us feel that we are finally safe at home. We are looking for something or someone to fill that void of homelessness.
One example of how this kind of mind plays out is being super busy. In my case, I tried to stay constantly busy to avoid confronting my fear of not belonging. I have a habit of overdoing and overachieving. This may sound like a positive mindset, but in all actuality it’s a form of running away. I have deep habits of running and trying hard. The thought of not having or finding home is so stressful and alarming that it can cause illness.
We can easily see this all over the world and in ourselves.
How do we find our real home?
A house made of wood is just that. Everything around you is made of materials that are impermanent. There is nothing lasting in external things, so they can never constitute a true home. If you begin to practice meditation where you discard false images, you can start to see your real home, which is a place within you that is eternal and unchanging.
This is truly joyful news. By letting go of falsehood, I discover more and more of the true place within me. I have found home for real. What a relief! Is there anything more important than this? Who wouldn't want to find their true home?
In hindsight, I am very grateful for all the anxiety and stress I've experienced in life. It's thanks to them that I started meditating; all my problems and suffering led me to the path of truth. Our true home is within us and has always been there! All we need to do is follow the method to discover it.
It's now clear to me that we have the choice to either follow our old mental habits that obscure our true home or to stop all the madness here and now! We are fortunate because we can go home right away! We have the GPS to find home.
I’m so very grateful to be able to share this meditation experience with you and I truly hope that it helps you to see that your true home is available to you right here right now if you only stop being busy with external outer appearance.
Thank you for letting me share more of this meditation with you. Let's all go home!
Happy Meditation!😊
Antoinette
Beautiful Antoinette!