Coming home
By Sita
Thinking of coming home brings a picture in my mind out of my childhood.
It is autumn, after a long day on school and a long walk through rain and strong wind I reach home. My mother made tea and sits at the dining table. The teapot stands on a tea warmer, and the candle inside it spreads a cozy light through the dim light in the room. Next to the tea there is tin with biscuits. My mother is waiting for us. She listens to our school stories. Our little sorrows and victories, our jokes and pains.
In the kitchen everything is ready to prepare the evening meal. There is no television playing for we didn’t have one yet. It is quiet. The only sound I hear is the sewing machine where she is making a dress for me. Now and then she hums a song. I make myself comfortable on the sofa and take a book, the cat comes to sit with me and life is good. Little did I know that my childhood would not stay so carefree forever.
But I cherish this memory, and this scene represents for me coming home.
Being safe in an environment where you can be yourself without any mask.A place where people are waiting for you and show their joy when you arrive.I am grateful for this memory for I realize now that many people don’t had a home like that. A safe harbor from where you can sail into the world.But even when you have never know this kind of home still there must be a longing to a place you can call home.
For me coming home is being surrounded by love.Like a warm blanket around your shoulders when it is cold outside.
Love, simply love.
Being a mother I always tried to create this in our house, for isn’t it love that makes a house a home? However I have to confess that I didn’t always succeed in this. There were times when I felt restless with a deep yearning inside me and then it seemed impossible to create a peaceful atmosphere in our house.
Of course I blamed everything outside me. Society, agression on television,, the negativity of people with whom i communicated, our teenage children who seemed to break down all our ideals etc.
And then Grace!
A well known saying from Baba suddenly became an insight.
The world is reflection.
From what?
From me, or at least part of me. The world as I see it reflects my thoughts and my feelings.
Okay…Shamefully I realized that it had never been the fault from outside forces.
Not the society, not television not..not…not.
Everything starts with how I look at the world and how I judge it. And I can only see what is inside me. With a heart full of love I will see only love. So all the other things i see are also little parts of me and then who am i to Judge?
My divine Mother, GopalMa told me 8 years ago: Sita never judge anyone but go deep inside for self development, this is the key to eternal peace.
Deep inside I find Swami in my heart, just pure Love.
A way for not judging myself or someone else is to forgive myself and others that we forgot. We just forgot for a while that Love is what we are.
God or Love will never judge us and knowing this I can start to love with an open heart.
It is Swami in the form of eternal Love or the Divine Mother who is always waiting for us to come home again. If we are lonely and hungry and when we have discovered that worldly desires leave us again and again empty and cold, She is there waiting for us in our hearts.
A moment of silence, of sincere prayer brings us back to Her.
Nourished and warmed by Her love, and our vision cleared by Her wisdom we see the world in a new way, in a new perspective.. We look at the world through Her eyes, through love. We look at the world from the windows of our real true Home.
Is this what Swami means when he says ”I see only Baba”.
Our real Home is our foundation, we need to stay connected with our Foundation to be able to love, to really love without judging,: our selves, our enemies, the world and everything we judged before.
In November Kannaiah asked Swami, “Swami how can we help You?”
And Swami answered one word ’Love”.
And that is a verbal…
And Home!
COMING HOME
By Linda
This reminds me immediately of my sister Anna, who created a postcard for her work, containing the text:
I have been everywhere except home. Her postcard sells very well.
When I open my little notebook, where I store my daily inspirations, I read: ‘You have to come back, Linda. You are full of expectations. Be the witness without expectation. “Me” is surrender’.
On another page I read: ‘Doing more things that you really like’ and ‘Fly away to yourself’.
More than once I am tempted to fly away to the world of expectations. This world includes performing duties just for results and without much dedication. The above-mentioned ‘inspirations’ are reminders for me that guide me back to the essence of life: to fly away from the world of expectations to the world of dedication and love. To myself.
To me, performing all duties with love is not always practicable. Adding activities to my daily schedule that are just for the joy of doing them, helps me. That awakens my heart-energy. Once awake, it will even shine on my routine activities. You may have read about this in my article in the May issue of the Sai Prema Vahini of 2010. Swami first gave me this advice in an interview during my stay in Girinagar: ‘Doing more things that you really like’ . Later He repeated this words in my meditation. The most difficult thing to accomplish was to find out what I really liked to do.
My sister helped me. But only after a little prehistory had taken place. Anna is an artist and we were discussing her work. Even she receives the kind of ‘inspirations’ like I often receive in my daily meditation. We both agreed that our ‘inspirations’ had to originate from the same inner Source. Swami once said, they came from Him only. But Anna is living a totally different life with different beliefs and convictions. So it was clear to us that the ‘Me’ that Swami mentioned as the source of the ‘inspirations’ was the ultimate Source, God, Home.
I asked Anna if she liked the idea of using the ‘inspirations’ in her work as an artist. She was awed by the mere thought of it and is successfully using the idea for many years now. She feels much more connected to her work. It’s like an intimate part of her now.
Much later we were discussing that I was advised to do more that I really liked and how difficult it was for me to find activities that fulfilled that condition. Suddenly she said: ‘You like drawing mandala’s isn’t it? Why don’t you use your ‘inspirations’ in your own mandala’s and create your own greeting-cards, just like me?’ That sounded like a very good idea. In the past I had helped her selling her cards on a fair; maybe we would be standing there together one day. That would be fun! That would triple my joy: first there was the joy of creating the cards, second, the joy of selling them with Anna on the fair for artists and third, the joy of knowing that people enjoy the mandala’s and texts and benefit from them. But how to start? Enthusiastically I started scanning my drawings and saving them on the computer. I collected my ‘inspirations’, which I had written in dozens of little notebooks, scattered all over the house. It appeared that Maanish had Photoshop software on his new laptop, which came in very handy. I pressed all buttons to experience the effects. After months of experimenting and e-mailing with Anton(who is a pro), these experiments have resulted in eighteen beautiful greeting cards. When Sita came with the call to support the Dispensary in Girinagar, the idea was developed to sell them and send the profit to India. I had always liked initiating small-scale projects to support charitable organizations, so now my joy, derived from this idea was fourfold: the creative part, the sales-part, making people happy with the cards and supporting a charitable aim. I sent pictures of the first ten cards by mail – beautifully arranged in a presentation by Anton - to family and friends and was surprised by the enthusiastic reactions. Within twenty-four hours the orders came in and still continue coming. I decided to expand the collection with eight cards, for my supply was shrinking rapidly.
The whole project feels close to my heart and I experience it as coming home. That makes it easy to detach from the result.
This is just one way of coming home to myself. I can engage myself in it with all my love, straight from my heart. Even when I only get the chance to work on the project for one hour a week, it enlightens the rest of my week. Consequently, the rest of my duties seem to gain in brightness due to this work and I can perform them with a little more love, joy and detachment. Originating from the same home station.
Home sweet home
By Brenda
I’m sitting in the shade on a warm place somewhere on the planet and look on top of the roof of the dispensary to a blue sky. No clouds are there. It’s a good place to be. It feels like a real home, but just a little different because of the surroundings. The leafs of the palm trees rustle in the cooling wind and the pigeons on the roof cuddle. Regularly an eagle floats around the sky manoeuvring with his feathered wings and i’m wondering where he lurks at. A picture where you will expect peace and harmony. Something like a holiday feeling.
But unfortunaly the truth is a little different. While I’m sitting there, a deep sorrow comes over me and tears are flowing. I’m feeling alone despite the good friends who are with me. For some days a stubborn knot in my belly is keeping me busy. A restless, tensed feeling, like i’m a prisoner; not free at all, like I’ll go against the stream of life. This feeling is keeping me awake at night and in daytime nothing is coming out of my hands. My body feels sick, but i’m not really sick. I know it’s better to let the feeling just be there and look at it. Because feelings are like waves, they’ll come and go. For me it’s a lesson in surrendering to Swami. This time Swami called and kept me under His wings. I can’t do a thing about what’s happening at home and to tell the truth, I don’t need to. It sounds so easy to do, but with this extreme feeling it’s a big lesson in life. At this time in my life it seems like an impossible task. Have faith and surrender to Swami. He knows what’s best for me. It’s an uneasy feeling; doing something opposite as i usely do. To give you all an idea of what’s going on within me let me tell you this. It feels like I’m in a wild river and have no idea which direction I’m heading to. I’m not in control of the way I’m going to. I search for the rocks who are mostly there to hold on to, but this time they aren’t. I try to swim in the upstream direction to find them and this takes a lot of energy.
While I’m swimming I know deep down inside that this is a process of getting detached from an old pattern in my life. I think I’m not ready to let it go. So I struggle for a while. I become tired and am seriously thinking about going home earlier than planned. To a house that isn’t mine anymore, because before I started this trip I had to say goodbye to it.
Slowly and with difficulty I start to write in my notebook, because I really want to go straight to the point, like I mostly want. So first I write about nothing important, but I just keep writing. I want to clear my mind and get my thoughts organized. So there will become room for a bright light. I write for about half a hour without a rest and at the end it’s still about nothing at all. But it feels like a relief. After a while I read it again and out of the blue sky there are these magic sentences which helped me at that moment of life.
In my notebook is written;
“What am I going to do?”
“Do I choose to go home or do I choose to stay home?
“When I will choose to go home i will go for confrontation, when I will choose to stay home (with Swami) I’ll choose for transformation.”
“At this moment I’ll choose transformation.”
And with these magic sentences I become closer to my Inner Home. An Inner Knowing that this is an important moment. That this has reached me and is discovered somewhere at a secret place inside. My Essence. Staying at a lovely Inner Home. That’s more worth then a house. These 4 sentences show me how to stay home within. I’m really happy with these worths of love. It feels like a relief; that I have found my Inner connection again. The new rock where I can hold on to. A real Home Sweet Home within.
Thank you Swami.
