A Seeker’s Guide to Going Home
Michael Shaun Conaway
Speaker | Generative Futurist | Philosopher | Filmmaker | Director WeRiseUP | Illuminating Human Nature
How to turn a trip to see childhood friends and family can be a spiritual adventure.
In Thomas Wolfe’s novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again” we are introduced to George, a writer, who returns to his hometown to find that it has changed and he no longer fits in and no longer feels at home. George longs to reconnect with the past but finds that he too has changed. Such is the inevitability of personal change and spiritual growth. In the 1940’s George was an outlier, one of the few that ever left home.
Today most of us no longer grow up with the traditional sense of a place being home. Still we face challenges when we attempt to go home again. Some of these challenges are with memories not matching the current reality. Other challenges have more to do with the friends and family we go back and visit. Somehow we have changed but the relationships seem to be frozen in time. Our parents treat us like children and in return we act like children. If you are on a spiritual journey, this can be very confronting. How can we be evolving if a simple argument with mom, sends us into an epic temper tantrum or a victimized sulk?
The fact is that while we grow and evolve and perhaps even awaken to the true nature of ourselves and our ultimate nature, we still have all of the patterns that we are made up of inside our being. Yes this includes the sulky teenager. The first step to integrating this truth is accepting it. While we would like to be purified of all of our not so nice patterns of thinking, feeling and acting, a human life doesn’t work like that. Although we can take various measures to disentangle the conditions that give rise to these patterns in our lives, we can never completely free ourselves from them.. And nor would we want to be free of them, as almost every pattern also comes with a gift in the right circumstances. The hyper-vigilant protector pattern is useful in a dangerous situation. It is not useful in a situation where there is no danger. You get the point.
So how do we go home as a spiritual practice?
All of us “go home” with a different past and a different set of circumstances, so the first thing to do is recognize your past. I recommend doing this as a daily meditation for the week preceding your trip home (or as it may be your home/family coming to visit you). Sit in meditation and cast yourself back into the past. Journey past the standard set of memories, good and bad, to allow memories to arize of simple moments, ones that you may have forgotten before the meditation. Resist the temptation to explain what is happening or how it impacted you. Just observe. After the meditation, write down any new insights into your past. With each successive meditation allow yourself to go deeper in experiencing memories that are not normally present. Notice any feelings and acknowledge them.
If you have trauma in your past and/or encounter traumatic memories, it’s best to seek out the help of a professional that can help you to heal the trauma. If at any time in this meditation you don’t feel safe, please pull yourself out of the meditation and consider seeking help with the trauma that may be there.
Meditating on the past often reveals emotions and unresolved energies that operate at the subliminal levels of mind. These subliminal patterns with energy and emotion are in a ready state to be triggered in your journey home.
When you arrive at home the mix of feelings and energy will be high. The job of your inner contemplator is gently observing the patterns that arise. It is not to intervene and hold you back from the experience, this leads to the pitfall of spiritual bypass which is an instant off ramp to your growth and spiritual development.
When you recognize any past pattern that typically sends you down a path of acting and feeling that reminds you of how you behaved and responded to home in the past or not how you’ve generated yourself to be in the future, that is the moment to practice Free Won’t. Our patterns include feelings, thoughts and actions which arise together. The moment a pattern arises, you begin the associated pattern. Fortunately there is a gap in which you can interrupt the action.
To exercise your Free Won’t, start box breathing on a count of five; inhale, hold, exhale, hold. You can do this with your eyes open, staying present in the moment. It will take your concentration to keep the breathing cycle going. This interrupts the action of the pattern as it is impossible to take the action and keep up the breathing. Keep repeating the box until you can see the pattern as a pattern. With a little practice you can do this without anyone knowing that you are doing it.
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At the point where you can see the pattern as a pattern, you can note it for further contemplation when you have a chance to be alone, or you can find a way to take a moment for yourself. A bathroom break is a great way to slip away for a short meditation.
The meditation practice to contemplate the triggered pattern, is to look inwards to see what the pattern is protecting. What is the feeling? What is the memory if there is one? What is the wound, big or small that is hurting? Take all of these things and send loving kindness to them, to your past self. Directly address the pattern and commit to a conscious way to insure that the hurt past self will be taken care of and protected.
Then turn your attention to the source of the trigger or the hurt. Look at the source with compassion, understanding that suffering causes suffering. While there is no justification for someone hurting another, there is suffering at the root of the hurtful action. If you can authentically do so, give loving kindness to the source of the hurt.
Finally ask your past hurt self, what it needs to feel safe. See your future self providing this to the hurt pattern. Acknowledge the pattern and the valuable service it brings to the collective you and let it know under which circumstances it is needed, and how you will take care of the circumstances that don’t rise to that level. For example if the pattern is to be suspicious and defensive, a circumstance where someone is harming you with their actions is a good time to be vigilant. A circumstance where you “read the signs” that someone might be capable of hurting you, is a better time for you to consciously address the situation rather than by a triggered pattern. You will need to explore this for yourself to discover what it takes to calm the triggered pattern.
This is what there is to do when old patterns come up when we go back home or when home comes to us. As you journey deeper into this you will begin to open up new spaces in your relationships with your family and friends.
While we can never go back home, and going home sometimes doesn’t bring out the best in us, we can consciously contemplate our past patterns and actively practice new patterns to have love, grace and ease when we are home.
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