Throughout all human history it has expressed itself in every single
facet of our lives - in our art, our music, our science, our mathematics, our
literature, our philosophy, in our quest for love, in our spirituality.
Male and female seek each other; try to complete themselves
through sexual union.
We seek our 'soul mates', search for our 'other halves' that
will complete us. In our cosmic homesickness we seek union with God, with Spirit,
with Nature, with the guru.
We buy houses together and magically transform them into
homes, and after a long, exhausting day at kindergarten, or at the office, we
just want to go home, back to mother, back to our loved ones, back to sleep,
back to the cosmic womb.
We populate landmasses, create countries, and call them our
homeland, our motherland, our fatherland.
We fight and die to protect our
homeland – the land that we love, the land our ancestors were born in and died
in.
As children, we are homesick when we are away from home for
too long, away from the ones we love.
In music, notes and chords go on a similar journey, moving
away from home, creating tension for the listener, but finally they resolve
themselves, and we feel like the song moved us in some way – took us on a
journey away from the ordinary, and returned us to where we were, somehow
changed, touched, transformed.
In art, the interplay of foreground and background, light
and shade, positive and negative space creates tension, drama.
Our longing for resolution makes the artwork compelling, perhaps
it is the same longing that has driven mathematicians, philosophers, physicists,
for all of human history, to seek some kind of grand, unified, all-encompassing
theory of reality, to find wholeness in the chaos, to find love in the midst of
devastation.
The spiritual seeker leaves home in search of enlightenment,
and returns home again, only to discover that the enlightenment he sought was
there from the beginning.
When people die we say they have 'gone home', or found a new
home where they can rest eternally.
We are told that even the universe is
expanding and contracting – somehow seeking equilibrium, seeking home.
Yin and yang, light and dark, creation and destruction,
tension and resolution, contraction and release - this is the heartbeat of the
cosmos, the heartbeat of all art, music, literature, spirituality, the beat of
our very own hearts, which must come to rest eventually.
All things long to come to rest.
It is no wonder that at its root the word 'home' means
'rest' or 'lie down'. Home is not a place, a thing, or a person – it is rest.
Home
is the limitless capacity in which all the appearances feelings, thoughts, and
sensations come and go. It's what you are.
Nothing can threaten your true home, my friend. Home is
always here, no matter what it looks like or feels like.
They may and try to smash our physical homes down but they
will never be able to smash our true Home for no matter how many bricks are
thrown, Home can never be threatened.
jf/ps/smoh
27/8/2012
Monday morning in Australia
27/8/2012
Monday morning in Australia
