Remembering Home

At birth, we wake up to find ourselves incarnate - we discover we are in a new body, surrounded by a new world of strange sensations. All of childhood, we are pushing away the cobwebs of sleep, trying to be fully present and understand this strange place which for a few decades will be our home. Flashes of what came before this life quickly fade, and we are swept away in the drama of being human.

But occassionally, our previous life laughs at us from behind a shadow, or sparkles at us in a glint of sunlight. We ponder who we are apart from the perspective of a body walking on a planet. We get glimpses of ourselves, and others, from some more universal perspective, that we can occassionally reach out of the whirlpool of feelings, desires, pleasures, and sufferings of this life.

Sometimes we become vaguely aware of the dream - the illusions we live in, that we are the center of the world, or the victim, or the lost child, or the one who can solve everyone’s problems. Sometimes we start to notice the props off the side of the stage, or get a glimpse of the audience behind the footlights. Sometimes we have the sudden feeling that everything is set up, and everyone is following some role. Sometimes we notice that a director is prompting our next lines, rather than us choosing what to say and do.

And that is the moment we can ask, if our life is a drama, who is it who got the role? What motivates the actor to take on this life? What is the actor’s true nature outside of this 80-year drama? Who was he before, and who will he be after? And who is he now, in between the moments when he says his lines with such passion that we think it is real?

How many times have these same lines been said in show after show? How many times have the same crucial emotions run their course through endless shows? This cannot be who we are. Can we wake up before the play ends? Can we wake up to the fact that our lines were written by someone else, and we have yet to speak what is true for us?

Somewhere, deep within, is the memory of what came before all this began. Somewhere, there is a place where we will laugh gaily at how we could have forgotten so completely for so long. Somewhere, our true home awaits.


Comment posted by
at 12/4/2006 9:49:44 PM
JUST A DAY AGO I FIND MYSELF POSTING TO A FRIEND HOW TO EXPERIENCE DIRECT REALITY. AND AS YOU HAVE ALLUDED TO YOUR DRAMA ANALOGY, I HAVE TO SAY THAT TRUTH LIES IN THE KNOWING THAT WE CAN SEE OURSELVES PARTICIPATING IN THIS PLAY IN A WAY THAT MIGHT SEEM FIT. WE WILL PLAY DREAM THE OUTCOME. AND IN THE END IF THIS OUTCOME DOES NOT FIT, WE JUST WALK AWAY DISAPPOINTED BUT HOPEFULLY STILL WITH OURSELVES INTACT. AND WE PROCEED TO THE NEXT PLAY UNTIL WE CAN FIND THAT WHICH TRULY FEELS LIKE WE HAVE COME TO A PLACE WHERE WE CAN FEEL WARM AND COZZY. LIKE BEING IN THE MOTHER’S WOMB. BEFORE THE DRAMA BEGAN. I WONDER IF THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.