The Art of Coming Home

Jesus was fasting for 40 days in the desert. The devil appeared and asked him to turn stones into bread, but Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." The devil then tempted him to change the power of gravity and lastly, to take over the world. In all cases Jesus declined and the devil was gone forever.
(New Testament)

If you run after possessions you run away from your True Self. Yet, if you don't allow yourself any luxuries, you may repress your intrinsic desires instead. And if you constantly run after sex you probably try to drown out the restlessness and emptiness inside; yet, by becoming a nun in the name of spirituality you may in fact be just be too afraid to face the lust that slumbers inside. The same with power. If you crave it you probably don't recognize the power that you already possess. Yet if you keep on turning the other cheek, as Jesus once demanded, you may in fact be afraid of the Clint Eastwood inside who wants to be expressed.

So where does that leave us? What are we to do if we are spiritual travelers? What is the True Self and what are nothing but repressed desires? There is in fact an easy reality check to know what is truly going on. As long as you perceive drive, greed, lust, avarice, anger, you have to deal with it. If you think you can just pray and meditate it away, you may be fooling yourself. Look for the authentic needs you can express with spiritually kosher means: a promotion at work that expresses your talents, a soul-partner who fulfills you sexually or perhaps even an open relationship. And what exactly prevents you from getting the house, vacation and hobbies of your dreams? This is your spiritual path; you find out what is kosher for you and what is not not. When you are where you want to be, peace will be with you; but until then, let life lead you to the expression of your True Self.

While peace and love is the ultimate measure of success, studying the demon who pops out every other full moon is the other. Why do we have anger fits on occasion? Why do we you experience emptiness and restlessness, and why do we at times do the opposite of what all the spiritual literature tells us to? Find the slumbering conflict inside that still hasn't entirely come to the surface. What authentic desire might we still not have granted ourselves? Instead of beating us up over it, we can very much try to understand what the demon wants.

The Art of Coming Home is the observation that there is a red thread right in front of us that helps us with our mission. Walking the Tao doesn't take the pain away that everyone else experiences. We have to adjust along the Way and change can be hard at times. We have to be entrepreneurial even though we may be averse to taking risks, and we certainly have to face all our fears. And sometimes we have to say no to what is meaningful to us. So while the pain is there, the rewards are bountiful. As we travel the Way, we feel how the pounds are dropping. We experience how our posture straitens and we realize how we become ever more light-hearted. Excess baggage that we have carried around for years is falling by the wayside. We travel light along the Tao and every step of the Way fulfills our authentic needs.

I started this note with Jesus' three temptations. All his temptations were about power. As we all know, Jesus ended up doing the opposite. He said no to the ego wherever he went and created a spiritual spark in half of humanity. That was his way of resolving his power struggle. What is yours? I am not saying that you have to become another Jesus - we already had one. Just become the whole, empowered and loving person that you are born to be in whatever niche that might be. Say no to your ego on some occasions, express your desires in others; try to understand what your demon wants from you. All of this is easy to accomplish, just dance with life. Peace and love may not always be with you, but ever more often as you walk the Way. Holding onto Her hand is a blissful journey indeed!