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Where ARE those Ruby slippers??

I wake this morning in the pitch black. Something is different; after a few moments, I realize it’s—yes—it’s this: I’m home. After the longest, most arduous journey, I’m home. Not in my house or my body or my life—but home.

Here.

Will I (the conscious awareness) permanently live here? Don’t know. The ruts are deep, the habits strong, the addictions ingrained. The avoidance of discomfort almost automatic.

Almost.

It doesn’t feel good, or bad or anything in between. It just is. And it’s all that is. It’s not complicated or advanced or some kind of a nadir or an apex or peak experience or flow or anything of the sort. It has nothing to do with anything going on in my life. It’s just home. Plunk. At this moment, I don’t want anything else ever again.

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I remember, over the course of my life, frequently experiencing this feeling of wanting to be home. I know this is not unique to me. I distinctly recall moments (many moments) of longing, of thinking over and over: I want to go home, I want to go home. Which confused me, because sometimes I was already in my house—and I knew I didn’t mean I wanted to go to my parent’s house or any home I knew—I was referencing something I didn’t understand.

I thought at times perhaps what I meant was God; I wanted to go back home to God. Which I think is true; there’s an ultimate, all-encompassing love we remember, in some part of our psyche, in our truest true selves—where we came from—and in times of stress, we want to go back there. We long for that feeling of safety, a feeling of being loved and secure and of being taken care of—the feelings our earliest parenting (if we were fortunate) recreated.

But there’s a home here, too.

Incrementally over the years I began (like a lot of us) to remember, to be reminded about Here. And to practice being “in the present moment” et al. I thought deeply about it, tried really hard, read (and read and read and read) about it, followed gurus, took notes, stopped taking notes, yoga-d, joined groups, watched documentaries, muttered affirmations, attended retreats, created vision boards, “called in”, employed techniques and reminders, threw myself into all kinds of sessions with all kinds of experts. Wrote about it (and wrote and wrote and wrote). Wrote books about it. Meditated. Breathed. Counted. Visualized. Practiced. Embraced. Rejected. Talked about it. A lot.

But it wasn’t there.

It’s not that these aren’t helpful or useful or perhaps important (I’m not sure and it doesn’t matter) or maybe even necessary in some way in some cases. And it’s not that they can’t offer important experiences and glimpses—I think that’s where their value lies. But they can become proxies, and they’re just never going to be it.

Like a lot of things in our current culture, “mindfulness” has become a gimmick, an industry, a virtue signal and a marketing term. Classes, movies, apps, books, courses, groups, retreats, gurus, videos, shows….talk, talk, talk, endless talk about it—maps maybe, fingers pointing at moons, sure….but it isn’t there.

It isn’t here on this page, either. Another pointing finger at the most. Nothing at all, perhaps.

Where is it?

As they say in Revolver,

It’s behind the pain.

It’s behind the heartache, the hopes, the concepts, the ideas, the distractions, the addictions, the avoidance, the thoughts, the reading, the writing, the disappointment, the confusion, the talking, the desperation. It’s behind the foot dragging, the imaginings, the dreams, the hurt, the accomplishments, the dug-in heels, the actions, the discussions, the plans, the anger, the disgust, the illness, the guilt, the drama, the trauma. Behind the not-good-enoughness, the pretension and better-thanness, behind the confidence, the desire to finally get it together, the slavering for recognition, for approval, appreciation, behind the thrill-seeking, the searching, the delving for meaning, the trying to get somewhere, the desire for rescue and to give up, to end it all. It’s behind all the cover ups—romance, depression, career, money—all the highs, all the rock bottoms.

Don’t get me wrong—those are real; they’re all going on, but there’s something else going on too, behind this game: nothing. Total silence.

There are two worlds happening simultaneously. And, ironically, we do everything within our power to escape the world of silence. Home is hiding in plain sight.

Somewhere, deep down, we know it.

Even though we’re all wearing ruby slippers, there are no shortcuts—we all have to travel down the yellow brick road to Oz.

As I sat under a tree at a cafe the other day with my daughter, the background music ceased and a voice began speaking:

What is your life about, anyway? Nothing but a struggle to be someone. Nothing but a running from your own silence.

—Rumi

Everything stopped.

Yes.

There it is.

Home.