SEEKING YOUR CLEAR PATHWAY
Each and every thing is looking for its own unobstructed pathway, the path that allows it to ‘be’.
If you toss a ball down a hill, the ball will follow this most basic of the primal laws of the universe: it will try to keep doing what it is already doing. So it will follow the easiest path down that hill, the ‘fall line’ that allows it to keep rolling, to fulfill what it can do.
The ball will not try to roll uphill, it won’t search for high spots and aim itself toward obstacles, toward difficult circumstances, complex situations, challenges; it will keep rolling and bouncing toward low ground, downward chutes and downward slants, it will keep trying to bounce away from and move over or around obstacles, in order to roll along on its way. It will keep trying to be a rolling ball, and will naturally fall along the easiest path that allows it to do so. It will keep seeking to be what it is, and search for an environment that allows it to be what it is, even though it has no mind, no thought.
That statement – keep trying to be what it is, to continue doing what it is doing, to keep searching for an environment that allows it to be what it is – applies to every star, rock, tree, insect, and human in the universe. Home, is where we feel the freedom to move as who and what we are.
The farther we feel removed from what we are, the more we start to die. The closer we feel to what we are, the more we start to live.
Wherever we go, we keep seeking that feeling of being here, of being clear. Even when we are uprooted and must leave what has been our home, we still look for something that feels like a next home, and then we try build that into some form that feels like ‘us’.
In music, the ‘key’ of a song is its home. It is the base feeling, the foundation that the notes spring from and must return to, otherwise the tune is fractured, baseless, empty. The notes can be harmonious with this key, can even venture out into strange disharmonious sounds and arrangements… but the notes must eventually again come back to home base, or the song seems incomplete, unfinished, uncomfortable.
The same thing happens with your life and your mind. If your life is always wildly changing, if you are constantly in unfamiliar territory, you will become worn down, you will not have a chance to feel comfortable, knowing, familiar with anything. Home. When you travel to new places, try new jobs and relationships, study new things, you still attempt to settle, to organize these things into a knowingness, a familiarity, a new home.
You take a vacation, but you return home. You move from dwelling to dwelling but you bring your things with you, arrange them into a new home. New and different, but still home. You begin a new relationship, then you try to discern and negotiate what can be common ground, familiar, what essence of that relationship resonates well within you, satisfies who you are and what you need and want. You try to figure out how to be ‘at home’ within your relationships with family, friends, lovers, acquaintances, pets, plants, vehicles, belongings.
WHAT DOES ‘AT HOME’ MEAN?
At home means you are moving, being, living in accordance with who you feel you are, what you feel you want and need out of life. It means having the freedom and the capabilities and resources to express yourself authentically, truthfully, creatively. It means feeling clear within yourself, and being free to interact and connect, in the ways you want, with all that is around you.
Each type of plant needs a certain environment, weather, soil, nutrients to thrive. When those are weakened or removed, the plant will ail, or die. As we rise along the scale to simple animals, to sentient and higher-thinking beings and humans, we need more and more freedoms to truly thrive. Clip a bird’s wings and put it in a small cage… and that bird may live for years, but a part of it is dying inside, the part that is the essence of what that bird is and what it wants: to be flying free, with other birds, over mountains, through trees, over water and fields. Its happiness, freedom, sense of self and sense of doing, are dying. If you put a cat or dog or fish or human into a six-by-six foot walled cell and never let them out… you can feed them, give them medical care, water, keep them alive for years; but they are dying inside.
They are not home, not free. Humans and animals are ambulatory, and social. We are born to move around, travel, explore, express, share, communicate. And humans have even more evolved brains: we want to live our dreams, create structures and environments, experiment, write, create artistically, open new possibilities. Being alive, but without your ‘fall line’ allowing you to freely move and exist as what you are, means you are dying. You are not existing as YOU, as the version of you that feels authentic, the version you want to feel like always, the version that feels like home, inside you.
CLARITY IS YOUR HOME
Just as that rolling ball seeks out the clearest, most unobstructed path down the hill, just as a caged animal or human will keep seeking the clearest path of escape to freedom, just as a stream will keep seeking the clearest channel across the earth, just as a suffering being will keep seeking the clearest treatment or medication to escape that suffering…
… So too will you always seek clarity. It is your home. It is always there, waiting for you to wipe away the obstacles and filters of your mind and circumstances, and find it again. It is the most unobstructed, harmonious, clearly-moving version of you, and you will keep trying to return to it, endlessly.
You may become unclear, confused and frustrated within a relationship, a job, a crisis, and what will you be doing all this time? You will keep trying to be clear, to return to home-clarity. You say it in a thousand ways: “I wish I could figure this out. Wish I could clear my head. Wish I could clear up this mess. I want to be perfectly clear. I’m trying to think clearly about this but I’m all confused. Everything’s fuzzy, blurry, I can’t figure it out. I want to be CLEAR!” We say it in so many ways, in languages all over the world. We keep trying to ‘be clear’.
Some of us try to live in clarity, tap into it consciously day and night using mindfulness, meditation, presence with the now. Others of us see-saw with it, we get lost in our plans, desires, daydreams, dramas, suffering and confusion, and then when it becomes acutely painful, when we really need to find our way back to control, strength, calmness, feeling like ourselves again… we slow down, try to clear our heads. Try to become clear again.
Always, we return to trying to find our clarity. Clarity, is seeing below and beyond our blindness, our heads full of thoughts and plans, dreams and entertainment and learnings. Clarity, is experiencing the here and now, piercing through our numbness and our busyness. Clarity is reading between the lines. Knowing amidst the unknown. Being you, within what seems like not-you. Finding who you are, even within a life that feels like it is not who you are. Clarity is when you pass beyond whatever makes you feel unclear and unsure and stopped.
For your entire life, you have already been trying to clear your mind, and you do this more acutely according to how messy your life seems at the moment. When things are moving along just fine, you don’t feel any particular drive to clear things up. When things become hard, confusing, scary, unknown, frustrating, then those obstacles are strong and are stopping you, so you have to put energy into trying to become clear again, figure those things out and move past them.
You seek to have a clear mind, to see your way out of the fog, the mess, and into clarity. You will stray into losing yourself, often and every day. But you will keep trying to return to home base, to clear awareness. You might lose yourself for days or years, but your clear home is still always there within you, waiting for you to brush aside the mess and open to clarity again.
Again and again and again, you will keep trying to clear things up as they happen. You try to clear your head, clear up your problems, clear up your life. You are doing this today, and you will do it for every tomorrow. Brushing the cobwebs from your clarity. You will keep returning to it, as you keep returning to your home.
CLARITY IS HOME
