Where can we find what is ‘our own’ in our experience? What is fitting? Where do we draw a sense of belonging from? Most of the time, we do not feel that we fit in, that we have a place. We feel insecure, so we secure an identity in a thousand things. We borrow from an object our appeasement. We make objects our own, we inhabit our thoughts, we adorn ourself with qualities, and we take shelter in a body. That’s what we do to fit in, and find security: we lose ourself in an ‘other’. We beg for anything that we could call our own, for fear of staying alone, and be left a nobody. We make up a self, and then call it ‘our own’. And that place of our own we find — and have defined — in a thousand shaky, unreliable places and things. But it is a bad try. In fact, we have burgled our own home of belongings that are not ours.
How are we going to find a home, if we keep rummaging through experience for every object that fits our needs? We ought to be disinterested for a while. We need to be disowned, dispossessed of every property or belonging that we have so far acquired, clung to, and in definitive stolen. For this is where true ownership is found, in not belonging. This is how a decent property is secured, by having no place to be. We ought to live free from all the accumulations that we have gathered and identified with. For our true home is not placed on the crest of experience, is not built on the sand of insecurity, and is not limited by the fence of limitation. It is not for a self, or a place, to produce the quality of enduring peace. Peace is already here, wholly achieved, in the home that our being truly is.
Live so that you don’t have to steal in your own house. You have it all. Your property extends to infinity and the world is the garment of your whole being. So in being, wherever you are is your home, and whatever you need is found here, in you, as you, with all the peace and security that pertain to a true home. You fit in when there is no space between yourself and what you long for. Being no space, you won’t have an urge to seek outside of yourself your identity and your happiness. Home is the recognition that you are already home. To be is to be home. There is no achieving it, let alone work for it. Be exactly where you are, in and as your own being — the place which you could never not be in. And if you find that a sense of indomitable peace is accompanying you there, then be in no doubt that this is home — what is your own, where you fit in, where you belong. Truly.
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Text and photo by Alain Joly
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Suggestion:
– Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…
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Good morning
I know this is a bit random
This morning I was sitting in meditation (just now) reading a book and I had the thought that I would like to begin a written conversation with someone….
And then you are into my mind.
I do not know who you are, I know nothing about you and it doesn’t feel necessary to know at this point.
But from your blog obviously there is some resonance of soul.
Would you like to begin this in confidence.
Perhaps beginning with the words
What I feel today is…..
I am happy to begin, or you can.
Thank you for considering this request of the heart.
Katie
Katie Abbott Founder
Pause Place http://www.pauseplace.com
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Thank you for your message. I am at a retreat now, so was not available to start a conversation. 🙏
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ok! Well I’m here if the flow opens
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Happy to have found your blog yesterday.
So many beautiful things to read and see.
Thank you.
Katie Abbott Founder
Pause Place
http://www.pauseplace.com
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Thank you Katie! I’m glad you connect. 🙏
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