You just don't realise it
What is the nicest word in the English language?
I agree with Laura Ingalls Wilder when she wrote:
Home is the nicest word there is.
Everyone who speaks English loves the word home.
Home has a mellow vibration to it with the long ‘o’ sound in the middle and the low hum of the ‘m’ at the end. And the ‘h’ at the beginning is firm and strong. There’s an inclusive, welcoming, unifying sound to it that envelops you like a soft, warm quilt on a wintry day.
We all want to go home, to be home.
This human longing for shelter, acceptance, and love is deep within us. Like the word home, this longing hums and vibrates through our being. But, ultimately, this unrelenting and often unconscious desire to be home goes beyond the physical realm. It’s not about bricks and mortar and other people. It’s about something more permanent. Something spiritual in nature. Something everlasting.
This is why we do things like meditate, repeat mantras, become whirling dervishes, retreat to snow-capped mountaintops, gaze at candle flames, do yoga, breathe long and deep, pray with foreheads touching the earth, and sing in mass choirs. We’re hoping to experience a sense of being spiritually, eternally home.
By doing these activities we can be home, but only briefly. When we've finished our spiritual practice, we move on to feed the dog, or walk back down to the village for supplies, or stop spinning and start sweeping, or close our sheet music, step off the stage and go and have a cup of tea. Then the sensation of being deeply home is gone. We’re once more filled with longing to go home, to be home.
The spiritual teacher David Bingham talks about this in an interview on Conscious TV. He says that activities like mantras and meditation can be beneficial reminders of infinite being, which is our true home, but his powerful message is this:
We are already home . . . The moment we just stop and notice that no effort is required, we’re already home.
Sit quietly by yourself and sense this longing to be home. And the moment you sense it, sense that you are home.
No matter what's going on around you, you are already home.
Whether you are performing a spiritual practice or washing the dishes, you are already home.
You don’t have to go anywhere, do anything, or be more than you already are.
You are infinite being.
You’ve never been anything else.
You are already, always home.
With love, Marlane