Corona has arrived while I am writing my book “Coming Back Home”. Such a timely arrival! As I am working from my home office, it did not occur to me that it would change my rhythm. Yet it did a great deal, to my surprise. Before telling you what kind of transformations I am going through, I would like to talk about “homecoming”. As for me, it is at the center of what we have been experiencing with the arrival of corona times.
The first 18 couplets of Masnavi talk about homecoming in detail through the story of the reed flute. It is cut off from the reed bed, its original home, carved hollow from the inside and holes are burnt into it. We hear its complaints through the stories of separation.
Let’s for a second put ourselves in its shoes. Are we aware of the separations we have been going through? If not, covid is voicing it on behalf of us. Telling us the stories loudly, in a way that it makes it impossible to avoid it any more. It has been interrupted our habitual ways and shown how our comfort mechanisms can collapse at any time by seperating us from our usual perceptions. And it becomes more and more clear with covid that the idea of home based on comforting and ego-satisfiying lifestyles is not an option any more. What is not of service to the whole is being burnt with the pain and challenges covid is bringing along.
What kind of separations make themselves visible to me in these times?
Dislocated wild life, burning forests, immigrants, people including me and my friends feeling away from home in a system that does not properly function any more. I witness how disconnected we are from the Earth, from the life forms on it.
I witness how isolated we become by our own presumptions, assumptions and scenarios of how things are and should be. Clinging to them, we are being blinded and deafened to what really is. On top of that, we are trying to find solutions that are coming from the same root as the problem. In fact, we have already put ourselves in quarantine long before corona arrived, by keeping ourselves in the comfort zones of our fictional realities.
In the midst of this rush, we are numbed to the existence of the earth below us, and sky above. This rush does not have to be a physical one. Not only white collar workers but also freelancers, those who are into yoga and meditation, people practising five times prayers a day and fasting, enviromental activists, they are all part of this rush. It is an intellectual as well as a spiritual rush.
As long as we do not slow down and thus allow ourselves to be humbled by the greater whole we are part of, embodying it each and every day in devotion, many so called crises and disasters are arriving to align us with the Greater Story. In its core, it is about homecoming.
We call home a place where we feel safe, comfortable or can benefit from. We call our family, our work, projects, productions home. Trying to survive, our salaries and insurance become our home. To some, what is home is their social status, positions and prestige. They define who a person is. Sometimes it is a group of friends we are trying to compensate our loneliness with or a community we be-long to. For some it is workshops, trainings or retreats. Even the spiritual path we walk and the practices tend to become our home. What if, for the sake of feeling satisfied, consoled and even for reaching truth, these homes of ours are actually blocking the paths going towards the real Home which is the origin and source we come from?
What if none of the above was our real home? What if home lied in the unknown as our near future does as covid again and again shows? What if we came to realize that we can not pin home down to a concept, rationalize and systemize it, but instead we have to stay receptive to it and wait for it in patience, in humility, in respect? What if we eventually understood leaving the limited human will and its power dynamics behind is not any more an option but an existential must and responsibility? What would change, shall we start imagining?
For Sufis, there exists nothing but the Sacred One, The Intelligent Wisdom. It manifests itself in different forms. As the Sacred unfolds itself in us in a way that is compatible with our potential, everyone manifests the Sacred in a different way. We can observe this around us very clearly. However, the Sacred is not something residing in the skies, checking on us only to find our mistakes and punish us. If nothing exists except it, then there can not be any duality. This means I have full responsibility. I am the forests burning, I am the animals going extinct, I am the refugees suffering at the borders. I am that Sacred which is manifesting itself on different levels; through water, fire, earth and air. Coming back home marks the journey of discovering our personal and unique ways of relating to the Sacred one. Home is the Sacred itself which escapes from all the human definitions.
