What Does Coming Home to Who We Are Mean?

What does coming home to who we are mean, and what does it look like?

We usually fall into either the category of “That’s a stupid question. I’m me.” (If that’s the case, this post won’t be of much interest to you). Or, we can look a little bit deeper and wonder:

Who is this me that I’m trying to come home to?

Who is this “me” that is asking the question and to whom am I asking it?

The problem, if we go that little bit deeper, is that the answer isn’t something that can be made simple. That’s where poetry comes in, sometimes. It can be a way of putting big concepts into a small number of words. On the Humaning page I said:

We are:

Oceans in a drop.
Biology with a history.
Receivers for an ineffable vastness.

But what does that mean?

This is where we go beyond just “I’m me” and we start to look at the possibility that the concepts and ideas that we hold about ourselves may be smaller and more confining than we have been aware of.

When we are struggling with trauma, with anxiety, with relationship issues, with just getting through life and not understanding why it is so difficult, it can be really helpful to begin building our capacity to let our minds expand a bit wider. To just open our thinking to the possibility that perhaps there is more to being human, and more to being “Me”, than what I currently understand.

When you realize that we live on a tiny marble in a galaxy of billions of stars that is one of billions of other galaxies in an infinite universe, it doesn’t take too much stretch of the imagination to consider that we may not know everything yet.

But, many of us are caught in circles of trying to fix ourselves, be better, feel better, be happier, be more fulfilled, or be less hurt, less angry, less anxious, less in pain. We run around in circles, doing the same things, getting the same results, trying so hard and not seeming to succeed. How can we? We aren’t asking the right questions.

And so, that’s how we start on the road to knowing more about who we are, and it’s also a way of starting on a road to healing. We just let ourselves get a bit more comfortable with the discomfort of having a powerful question, rather than a comfortable answer. And we let the question expand our world so that we start seeing doors where before we only saw walls.

This quote is often attributed to Einstein, although he apparently didn’t say it. In any case, it is fitting here:

“We can’t solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

So, a first step is to ask new questions, and allow the possibility that we are perhaps both less, and more, than we realize – and that both of these seemingly opposite ideas can expand us in helpful ways.

We are:

Oceans in a drop.
Biology with a history.
Receivers for an ineffable vastness.

What do these lines mean to you?

Before you answer, close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Feel your toes. Feel yourself breathing. Keep breathing. Just for a moment, be aware that you are aware – someone is experiencing all this. Who is it?

How might this very impractical question, one that words can’t answer, have seriously useful and practical effects on your experience of being alive?

You can read more about this here on humaning.ca or in my book “Falling Awake”, available from the FriesenPress bookstore.