A few weeks ago, we moved into a new house; the first house I’ve ever owned. Yes, my name is on the title. Crazy. A homeowner? In Hawaii? How interesting that this a part of “the Plan”! My intention has only always been to listen inward for a sense of rightness, and be guided from that place. The result is often surprising, as I’ve learned to not be attached to the form things take, but the sense of alignment, the way I feel in my energy body.

Because conditioning about home and family is so strong, our ideas about them are often rooted in a paradigm of lack. We are conditioned to think that Home, both as geographical location and a close-knit group of people, will give us the mythical connection, love, belonging we long for but never had.  Belonging. The motherlode. Because in an idyllic “home”, you belong. You will not feel alienated, alone, different, apart from the rest. Wink, wink 😉

The truth is, if your path is different, if you are different, you will feel different! Moving somewhere new will not change that. A less dysfunctional family won’t. No people or place will ever fill your holes, because there were never holes to fill– despite what culture tells you.

That’s the deeper work…Feeling at home within one’s self. No matter with who, what or where. No deficiency. Of anything.

Home is a spiritual -inward- practice of coming home, to oneself. Independent of anything or anyone external. How can it not be? It would be a cruel cosmic joke to make the ability to feel at home, that I belong, dependent on those around me or where I live. Yet, when we feel energetically aligned with where we live, our ability to feel at home in our self is enhanced. And when our growth no longer feels supported where we live, we certainly know it. The volume on everything that is dis-resonant for us gets turned up so high that we will have to geographically move.

For almost twenty years, until the volume got turned up so friggin’ high that I had to leave (!!!), I lived in a place that never felt like “home” to me.  I used to travel to get away from home. I couldn’t wait to get away. Now I don’t want to. Now, every day I look out the window, I am reminded that I’m living on a tropical island. It feels right and good.

It has been a long time since I have been able to say: I feel I belong… not to the place, home, people or Hawaii, even, but that I belong, period. A deeper sense of belonging. Paradoxically this has arisen from a place inside of myself that is independent of place, but is also supported by being here. The fact that I feel at home is the result of integration I now feel inside, not the other way around. I’m good with being different. I’m good with not fitting in. I’m good with having one or two close friends. I don’t need numbers of people, or a place, or similarities and likeness to tell me that I belong.

Home is not a place or people, it is a feeling of belonging to oneself. I belong. I BELONG. Period.

Cancer New Moon Intuitive Practice: Come Home

During Cancer season, our feeling sense of belonging, and how supported and nurtured we feel, or not, gets kicked up ten or twenty notches. That feeling grows exponentially during a Cancer eclipse. Eclipses tend to move our growth along at a more rapid pace than normal so big changes in the home, family, motherhood areas are common.

Despite all this home front activity, Cancer season asks us to turn our attention away from the outer world, and turn inward. It’s a unique challenge. We live in a world that demands we go outside of our self, to engage it. Our Ego thinks we need to look outward or we will miss out… on something. Yet remaining focused on externals (other people, energies, goals) is the fastest way to become disconnected from our intuitive guidance, from the truth of what we feel.

Just as the Moon cyclically is drawn toward and then moves away from the bright Sun, we, too, must learn to pull our energy back inward – away from everything external. Moon Goddess beckons us to “come home” to our self.

Coming back home to our self means we are more engaged with our inner life than what’s going on outside of us. We don’t have to attend to the world’s endless list of demands – 99% of which are not the emergencies they claim. We don’t have to be the universal mother. If our partners, family, business truly need us, we’ll know it… Because we’re at home in our self, because we are sitting with a direct line to our Soul’s Truth, we will know fact from fiction, instead of getting pulled into drama. When we’re not “at home”, everything feels like a drama and it’s hard to discern what’s true or real.

How can we turn inward, come home to our self?

Imagine a flower curling toward itself, or the inside of a seashell. Inwardness is a felt, energetic experience, and I would say a skill. When it comes to being connected to your own Truth and intuitive guidance, it is everything. Because we know we can always return to this inner sanctuary, we learn that we can finally trust our self, our answers, our guidance.

The most instructive how-to came from my teacher. Essentially, she said, “you have to train yourself to become more curious, interested in and engaged with what’s going on inside your body senses than with what’s going on out there, or in your mind.”  When we get still and curious enough to really pay attention to that tug in our heart, that lump in our throat, that spinning out energy or heaviness on our chest…we are on our way back home. When we are more interested in observing how we feel than our mental stories about how we feel, or our computers…we are coming home.

If you are in anxiety or fear, you are definitely not inward; you have “left home.” You are elsewhere, in another, perhaps in another’s, field of energy. If you are in your mind, thinking, you are also not home. I have a friend who says she can trust her own guidance when she feels something in her heart. Home is certainly where the heart is.

When coming home, intention is everything. I recently attended a fancy ball, with perhaps 300 people. I set the intention to stay inside myself, and experience my own energy, instead of getting absorbed in what was going on around me. About halfway through I became aware of the sensation of being so deeply inside myself, it was as if I was the only one in the room, yet I could tell that I was more present and aware of what was going on than most around me. As a result, this energy sensitive introvert walked away from a very social event feeling peaceful and energized (!).

Here’s the practice: Notice when you leave home… or when you feel bad… that you are in your head, thinking, spinning out in fear, anxiety, in other people’s energy, or caught up in something external to you. Then, set the intention to come back home. Tune into your energy body. Your heart, breathing, your spine. What’s going on? Don’t be alarmed to discover uncomfortable sensation. Noticing the subtle or big discomforts that most of us tune out in the course of a day is a good thing. If you can feel it, you can release it, through simple presence and breathing (not thinking). Be willing to patiently wait for that sense of rightness, again, that sense of softening back into your own energy field. You will know you’ve come home when you can energetically feel the peace, grace and ease which you are.

A fabulous side effect of feeling at home in your self: you will feel that you inherently belong. Anywhere and everywhere.

We may “leave home” many times a day, but what matters is that we know how to get back again.

Welcome Home.