You Can Come Home Again

It's true. You can.

I can. Anyone can. We all can. Anytime we want to. It's just that many of us have forgotten how to, or maybe we've lost the map. That's OK. We can find it again.

The way home will never leave us. It's more ingrained than that — hard-wired. It's part of us. We are programmed to know where home is — and when we get back to it we feel it — sense it.  Smell it. It's not a brain-knowing - it's the body and bone knowing - down deep. The deep dark. The dirt and the bones.

Our home is the Wild Earth - our only home - as the Dalai Llama calls it  - and we can go home whenever we want to. We just have to take the time and slow down enough to do the work. And, we have to remember. 

Re-member. Put ourselves back together from whatever fragmenting chaotic, disruptive force has dis-membered us in the world of extreme, exaggerated activity and hyper-connectivity and 70 or 80 hour work weeks — people running around like headless, caffeinated chickens, hunched over shiny phones and tablets. 

I am from a culture of constant movement and personality identification. I meet others with my personality: personality to personality - cherished image to cherished image - painstakingly maintained and upheld. We say hello and check each other out. 

Meanwhile beneath the husks of personality be tender souls - the true essences - the witnessing calm and present, tender beings - spirit creatures. We hide our beauty from each other and from ourselves. 

Enough! It is time to bring down the husks of personality and ego and meet eachother and all beings with the soul presence that is our birthright. It is the only respectful, loving thing to do. That's what Returning To Earth is about. I'm glad you're here. 

Coming home. Being at home. Returning to home - to the familiar - to a place where I am known and loved and welcomed. Home.

To the hearth. To the center of my world - where I grew up and where I belong and feel connected and understood. It is an ancient home - not the street and the collection of houses and people and dogs that I knew as a child. It is the home that I evolved in as a wild human animal - back in the days before steam engines and petroleum, when I felt the seasons changing in  the larger body of the earth and felt little separation between that body and my own. It grew into and through me. It was me. Still is.  It's the home I know from down in the deep dark. Ancient knowing. 

Sitting and writing this I feel a calm descend on me, grounding my body - in my belly - maybe slightly lower, my pelvic floor, or slightly higher in my solar plexus - at the top of my stomach  — no higher - not in my head. It's in my hara - the basement of my being and feeling. 

This process of Returning to Earth is an embodied one - not a head/brain centered one. The practices work through and with the senses -  attuning and unblocking them so that the feedback loops are open and the conversation can start again where it left off. The practices are simple yet profound. They have lead me to deeper peace and connection and a pervading calm. They can do the same for you. 

I breathe easier these days. That has not always been the case. I look forward to sharing these gifts with you so that we might come home together and sit around the fire and maybe look each other in the eyes, see our souls shining out at ourselves and say, "Welcome Home Sister/Brother." 

Much Love, 

Joe