Home has been an especially prevalent theme in my life the past few weeks. My husband, son, and I will be moving in a couple of months to a new house just down the street from where we live now, and my 3-year-old son is distraught about leaving the place we’ve called home for the past two years. Simultaneously, my grandparents are selling and moving out of the house they’ve lived in for the past 55 years, and the whole family is distraught as their house has served as our collective home base for that entire time. And finally, Seaside Yoga Sanctuary, where I teach, left its home in Seaside and established a new one in Carmel.
With all this movement and these transitions going on (even if you are not personally packing boxes and moving, we are all in a constant state of transition — some big and obvious, some small), it is important to remember that Home exists within you, and nothing — no space, time, person, event — absolutely nothing can separate you from your Home.
At any time, under any circumstance, you can close your eyes, connect, breathe…and there — that’s Home.
“Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.Since I was cut from the redeemed,
I have made this crying sound.Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back…”— Rumi, excerpt from “Song of the Reed”
As you practice both on your mat and out in the world, you may use the mantra: I am home. I am home in this body. I am home in this space. I am home in this moment.
We do the dance of turning in/touching in and opening, turning in and opening, repeating over and over until the line between them becomes blurred, they’re no longer two separate actions, and we begin to recognize that Home within us is the same as all that surrounds us — the oneness of everything.
“Into my heart’s night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.”— Rumi
You’re Home. You’ve never been anywhere other than Home. Our awareness shifts sometimes, and when that happens we can bring it back, welcoming ourselves Home again. Our perception of our proximity drifts, but Home is always right here in this breath. You have nothing to be afraid of — you’re already Home.
Krystal Barschig 