Being at Home Within

Filed under Articles on 12. March 2007 »

One common denominator for us human beings is that we are all looking for home in some way. We want to get to some place where we can finally come to a stop in our search, somewhere we can relax and feel at ease. We are looking for comfort and safety.

However, most people are looking for home where it cannot be found. They look for this place of safety and comfort in the world of form, which usually entails accumulating objects and thought forms to use as a safety net. To see how this works, all we have to do is look to the people who seem to have the most safety and comfort in our society; celebrities, wealthy business men, and generally people who have become somebodies in the eyes of the world. We look at these people in magazines and think; this person has found a home in the world, a place of security and permanence. In contrast, those who have little external safety in the form of money, status, or some kind of worldly identity, are people who we assume must be in a desperate search for that sense of feeling at home. And usually they are.

But the thing is, most of the ones we see as having found their place in the world are still looking for it. Because whether you are a somebody or a nobody, rich or poor, famous or unknown, unless you have gone beyond needing that sense of external security, you will never be able to stop seeking more of it.

Seeing only the world of form

What lies beneath the search for a place of home in the world of form is that same old culprit we are always talking about: identification with form. The ego. Because then we see ourselves as objects surrounded by other objects, looking to secure ourselves with more objects. And as a consequence of being identified with form, all we see is form and not the formless space out of which the forms arise; only noise, and not the silence that lies behind and beyond it; only doing, and not being; only the world, and not God (or life/the source, if you prefer).

When you see the world of form as all there is, avoiding things and situations that don’t fit your preferences then becomes a matter of great importance. You experience life entirely in terms of the external form of whatever situation you are in, and so that situation dictates your quality of life completely. So if the situation you are in is less than perfect, if it is not completely fulfilling, you need to look for ways of improving it or keep trying to find something better.

And as we know, no situation in the world can ever bring ultimate fulfillment. As long as you are looking to the world for satisfaction, nothing will ever satisfy you because it is simply not in the nature of the world to do that. Things break down, dissolve, move, change — if you ever think that you’ve found ultimate fulfillment in form, just wait for a little while and see what happens. If things don’t change or fall apart in some way, you will get anxious about the possibility that they might. Or alternatively, you will get bored and start looking for something even greater for satisfaction.
When you know this, however, you can enjoy the world and play with objects and situations simply because you can. But as long as you seek fulfillment in it, the world will cause you frustration and suffering.

The story

An unavoidable part of seeing only the world of form, only the surface layer of existence, is that you experience your life as a story in which you are the main character. So, in this state of being completely identified with form, your experience is always defined by, and limited to, the story you are telling yourself. This story is basically a bundle of thought forms that has to do with your form and how it relates to other forms, and it always has a past and a future. The past being the reference by which the story is defined, and the future where that story will complete itself (e.g. making it, or not making it). This story is then kept going by a stream of unconscious thinking, that takes bits and pieces of mental images from the past and projects them into a hypothetical future situation, attempting to control what happens and secure its survival.

And the thing about stories is that they are interchangeable; that is, the content of the story is interchangeable. The structure of the story is basically the same between people, even people who seem to have nothing at all in common on the external level, and however complicated a story has become it is always possible to break it down to very simple mechanics of fear and delusion. We could say that form identification is the cause, the mechanics of the story are the effect, and then the content of the story is just that, content. There is a sense of lack built into the structure of the story, which means that no content, however beautiful or exciting, can ever fulfill it. The story is built on the illusion that one can find permanence in form, or in other words a home in the world, and whatever content is added to the story cannot overcome the limitations of the structure itself.

To simplify this, there is a saying that goes: “there are two ways of being unhappy: not getting what you want, and getting what you want.” One can have everything and be miserable, have nothing and be at peace, have nothing and be miserable, or have everything and be at peace.

Stepping out of the story

The world we inhabit when engaged in and identified with a story is incredibly complicated and full of different things. There is this object, that situation, tree, car, job, husband, yellow, green, desirable, undesirable — this is a world filled to the brim with concepts and labels, one object after the other and no sense of space whatsoever. And what keeps this world and the story of it going is the constant stream of conceptual thought, the mental noise that we are all so familiar with.

In order to become free from this world of complexity, and the compulsion to look for your home on the level of form, it is necessary to have part of your attention in the non-conceptual, in nothingness. This can be seen through many different pointers, for example to always have part of your attention in silence rather than having it all occupied with noise: basically, it is about not allowing all your attention to become occupied with form. So that when you perceive the world of form, look at things and operate on that level, you are aware of the formless at the same time, seeing the manifested in context with the unmanifested.

To realize the dimension of stillness, and to be able to keep part of your attention in it at all times, you must direct your attention within. This is to point your attention away from something and into nothing, away from the outer and into the inner. And a helpful practice for accomplishing this is to feel the body from within, so to speak, to put attention on the feeling of aliveness within the body. There are various methods for doing this, and you may even be able to do this without any particular method, but as an example you can try observing your breath and then go within from there. Follow the air as you breathe in, and sense the alive feeling in the abdomen, or the chest. This feeling of being inside the body can be a very strong connection to the formless; a direct experience or awareness of inner space. And the stillness is so vast and peaceful, that as you begin to sense it more and more strongly the noise of conceptual thinking will quiet down on its own.

When you are in touch with that stillness, you will be able to perceive more and more without labeling. Some labeling is helpful and practical, but the way it operates in the ego inflicted human mind is way beyond redundant and doesn’t add any value to what you perceive. This lessening of conceptual thought means that the world you inhabit becomes much less complicated, even up to a point where your experience can be reduced to the concepts of being upright, sitting, or lying down. Or even these concepts can be let go of, making life as simple as just life energy flowing through the body.

To be fully operational in the world, you don’t need to rely on the mental noise of compulsive labeling. We tend to assume that if we were to stop thinking, everything would fall apart. But the truth is, that when we let go of that level of conceptual thinking and become still, everything that is needed will flow out from stillness. If we need a label, it will be there. Not as a noisy and repetitive thought from conditioned thinking, but a quiet and unobtrusive thought that only lingers for as long as it is needed and then dissolves again.

Wherever you go, there you are

When you see the futility of seeking home in the world of form, you will be able to find it within; the only place it can be found, and where it always has been and always will be. This home is permanent, changeless, safe, comfortable, and peaceful — it is everything you’ve been looking for. And when you are at home within, no matter where you go or what happens you will always feel safe, being comfortably at home in any situation that may arise. As it says in the Tao Te Ching: “Thus the Master travels all day without leaving home. However splendid the views, he stays serenely within himself.”

You will find that only the surface level of life ever changes, while life itself is unmoved by what happens on the surface. And so when you are rooted within, whatever happens on the surface doesn’t matter all that much anymore. It is as if you were sitting in a movie theater, observing what happens on the screen; enjoying it, but knowing that whatever you are seeing ultimately cannot touch you.

So when you are at home within, it doesn’t really matter that much where you are or what you are doing. You can choose to be there and do this, but there will be no craving in the preference anymore. And neither do you need to desperately avoid any situations either, because you recognize that they are relatively insignificant in comparison to what is within.