Taking the Long Way Home

“Are we there yet?” That familiar universal refrain from our childhood, uttered while enduring those lengthy and tiring road trips, is still being echoed by many of us today who, as weary pilgrims, wonder just how much longer there is to go and how many more challenges there are to face until we arrive home safely.

It often feels as though we are on a never-ending journey passing from one tough test to another, one relational challenge to another and from one heart-ache to the next. These periods are gratefully interspersed with sprinklings of joy and levity to keep the flame of hope alive and ensure that we don’t totally lose heart. However, during those times of personal crisis, doubt, disorientation and quiet desperation can easily enter and it feels as though we are taking the long, winding way home with no real end in sight. Lost in the mist, we wonder if the sun will ever shine again and pierce the dark clouds temporarily obscuring the light of our Soul.

Why does it feel like such a Long Way Home and does it really have to be this way?

In the Wisdom Teaching associated with our spiritual lineage, we are told that planet Earth is referred to throughout the Cosmos by various names that give us a clue to the deep reason behind our particular challenging terrestrial experience.

For instance, Earth is called the “Blue Pearl” and we know from science how a pearl is formed. It starts with a piece of grit finding its way into an oyster shell in the ocean which causes irritation of the membrane inside. The oyster’s soft inner body then secretes a smooth crystalline substance called nacre that coats and reduces the irritation. As this coating builds up layer by layer over time, it forms a pearl.

This natural process seems to mirror the pedagogical approach inside the classroom of Earth where we are told that from pain and suffering, joy and wisdom eventually emerge as the precious precipitate called a Pearl of Wisdom. Life can be somewhat gritty and irritating as we learn and grow through rubbing up against each other and our own unpolished edges!

Another descriptor, “the Sorrowful Star” reinforces the message of the Blue Pearl that life on Earth is an alchemical process which eventually produces, from the lead of our pain and suffering, the transmuted gold of joy and wisdom.

A third name given to our planet, “the Little Daughter of a Long-Lost Son” paints a picture of Earth as being a very long way from its celestial home. Not only does Earth need to reconnect with its solar parents and family but the sun Itself – that Solar Life in whom we live and move and have our being – is also on a home-coming journey inside the greater Cosmos.

We are also told in the Ageless Wisdom that the truth of who we are – our Sovereign Self and Essential Nature – is “nearer than hands and feet and closer than breathing.” So how can it be both a long way away while also being right here now? This illustration from Mother Nature may provide a way of answering the question and deepening our understanding of the revelatory process.

Let’s reflect on the California poppy and how it graces our local landscape with its beauty. It starts life as a seed and yet, if I were to hold a poppy seed in my hand you will not see the beauty of the future flower displayed. If I cut open the seed with my gardening knife you will most certainly not find the poppy hiding inside. The light-filled promise of the fully flowered poppy that has been encased and hidden inside matter is only revealed and shown on the ‘outside’ by being sown and grown – season by season – in the fields of time, space and substance.

The seed does not begin its journey of revelation by being broadcast on the bare earth and exposed to the sun but is buried in the darkness of earth as the natural womb out of which birth proceeds. A deep longing to find the light has the newly quickened seed reach upwards and then, having finally broken through into the light of day, it continues to grow until that time when the flower bud opens to reveal the splendor of what was always present as a promise but now is a gloriously revealed reality.

Our lives mirror that same process of natural growth and revelation. We at Meditation Mount believe that the light-filled promise of the Soul is encased and carried as a fiery seed of hope inside the heart during our time on earth. We are placed in the dark soil of ignorance and unknowing and yet this darkness also acts as the womb in which the inner light germinates and quickens. As the deep call of home is registered, it moves us through the many painful challenges where our heart is broken and opened up for the presence of love to enter. Love is the key nutrient in the burgeoning of our Lighted Self in the Garden of Gaia – lifetime by lifetime.

Living in these turbulent and fast-paced times it is all too easy to lose perspective of what life is really about. Buried in life’s daily details it is difficult to appreciate how we fit into a greater scheme of meaning and creative expression. Our lives are not petty and meaningless, they are cosmic in scope and despite all the daily indications to the contrary, we are each part of a grand outworking of that sacred trinity of the Greek philosophers, Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

We are sacred fractals of the One Life and our deep history is interwoven with the great Story of Creation. The good news is that we are no alone on this journey and as Ram Dass reassuringly declared: “We are just walking each other home.”

The following musings impressed themselves upon me several years ago as a way of retelling this collective story.

“THE ONE slumbered through the Cosmic Night in a state of un-knowing and dream-like amorphous Unity. The I AM sensed but did not know Itself… And with the dawn of a new Cosmic Day, it stirred and stretched and dreamily imagined infinite possibilities as the Desire-To-Be burned deep within its heart. Then through an Act of Will, THE ONE fractured itself into a million pieces and sent them on their way into the fields of time and space as pilgrims on a journey of self-discovery. “Having pervaded the Universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain.”

Over time, the separated parts awoke, looked around and beheld others: never realizing the true nature of this ‘other’. Inside the encapsulation of the separated Self, each aspect experienced the power of the isolated ‘I’. Through a series of relationships with that which lay outside, an identity of a ‘me and you’ was born.

With faltering steps, the I AM THAT made its painful and persistent progress along the Path. The long journey of ceaseless striving for Humanity as the Prodigal Son and Prodigal Daughter had now begun in earnest.

Deep within the heart of the separated Self, a Cry for Wholeness welled up and issued forth. Slowly the parts began to see themselves in each other until an understanding dawned within the consciousness of the fractured body of Humanity that there is no ‘other’: there is only the One Soul.

Imagine the euphoria of this Spiritual Homecoming coursing through the group field as the soul whispers in our inner ear:

“There is no inside or outside, no me or you, no above or below for the mind to grasp – there is only a sublime state of at-one-ness suffused with joy and permeated with a profound and fiery love that knows no bounds.”

The Mystery of Being registers and awakens in the human heart through a deep co-resonant communion with that Presence we call Christ Consciousness – the Heart of Hearts – dwelling within each human heart as the seed and promise of our true Self.

Then finally, when the day has come, the I AM THAT I AM will emerge as THE ONE WHO KNOWS ITSELF AS ONE WITH ITSELF: a result of all the probations, trials and weary steps taken throughout the ages upon the long and thorny Path of Self-Realization.

Lives within Lives, wheels within wheels and journeys within journeys: all in constant communication and co-creative communion.

Everything is a Sacred Fractal of the One Life. Everything is Essentially Divine.”

There is one simple way of accelerating our progress on the path of service and spiritual growth and it begins with the opening of the heart. The heart is a magnificent organ of connectivity, receptivity and radiation that is in constant resonance with the Presence at the Heart of the Great Mystery. This Presence is the Fire of Love that pervades and sustains all of Creation.

The Agni Yoga teaching boldly declares: “The heart tirelessly throbs and pulsates lest people forget it. The heart is the most tender, the most intense, the most responsive to that which is near and most far. The magnet of the heart is the synthesis of all subtle energies.”

This open and loving heart is the necessary earthly hearth that we must construct to safely house the Cosmic Fire of Love on Earth. Placing the mind in the center of the heart is a powerful way of joyfully generating the presence of Love that is so needed to bring warmth and light to our fellow travelers on the path as we journey homewards together.

“As still further progress is made, the joy of the soul begins to pour through the worn and weary vehicles, and gradually the positive nature of the soul takes hold. When this is strong enough and the man is sufficiently decentralized, it is the soul quality which will persist in spite of physical limitations, and the inner sense of weariness will then be carefully negated and consciously and intelligently transmuted.”

~ Discipleship in the New Age Vol 1, Alice A. Bailey

Note to Self: Any time that clouds descend–dimming the view of my companions and

the road ahead and I feel weary and stranded a long, long way from home–I will

breathe gently from the heart, give thanks for the gift of Life, inhale the joy of being

alive and remember that: “Home is where the Heart is.”

Michael Lindfield

Board President

Meditation Mount