Spiritual Awakening is the ultimate homecoming. It is the discovery of a home that you can never leave and the realization that you have never been anywhere but home all along. This human life – with all of its hardships and joys, victories and defeats, pains and pleasures – is home. We are already home. This is it and always has been.
The experience of life has left us with inner wounds of separation – habits of retraction, recoil, and isolation that leave us trapped in a severely limited sense of self. Somewhere deep inside we realize that this sense of limitation is unreal and we long to find our way back to reality.
In moments of profound mystical opening our awareness is temporarily released from the distorted perceptions of contraction. In these moments we suddenly and unexpectedly find ourselves home. We land in a place so perfect that we have no desire to be anywhere else. We are home in the most profound way imaginable. When these miraculous episodes fade and we find ourselves back in our limited and contracted self we feel heartbroken.
If we are not careful we will mistakenly reassert the illusion of being lost. Because the experience of contraction has returned we are tempted to assume that we are no longer home. In our alarm we may embark on a quest to recapture what we imagine we have lost. We restart our spiritual quest forgetting that we have already discovered that this is it. If, on the other hand, we have the fortitude to remember that we have already arrived, the true spiritual journey can begin.
The true spiritual journey is not the journey that takes us home. In fact it is not our journey at all. It is the expansion of the only true home there is – consciousness. The true journey is the evolution of consciousness. The fact that consciousness evolves does not mean that we have not already arrived. Consciousness is never less than complete. It is always a full expression of the experience that is currently available to be had even though it is also not the limit of what is possible.
Can we hold our current reality as perfect at the same time that we recognize that it will be more? Can we live in total fullness that is destined to become more full? The spiritual life requires us to embrace an unconditional wholeness that relentlessly continues to grow.
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