Return to Yourself: Finding Your Way Home

Later this week I will be moving out of my apartment — the place I’ve called home for 13 years. The sale is schedule to close on Friday.

It’s been a long journey, beyond the 10 months (and 9 offers) it took to before I was in contract (more on that later). In 11 years as a real estate agent, I’ve never had a listing take so long to sell. The average time on the market for my other listings over 11 years is less than 70 days.

And the time on the market doesn’t include the 2 years leading up to that point, in which I decluttered (twice) and prepared my home for sale, amidst constant interruptions.

Of course, the time frame in which we believe things should happen is an expectation that only serves to set us up for suffering when reality doesn’t match our expectations. We don’t get to control the timing. Our role — indeed, our only option — is to trust the greater plan and to surrender to the will of something we cannot see or control.

I know this. And so each time I found myself in resistance for how long the process has taken, I reminded myself to seek the lesson. There’s a reason that this process has taken so long; something I needed to do, or become, or learn.

Recently, I had an insight around this: to move on from my apartment, I had to first find a home within myself.

What does this mean?

We Live at War Within Ourselves

We inherit values, beliefs, and expectations from our parents, teachers, mentors, our communities, and the culture at large. Most people never stop to investigate what these values, beliefs or expectations are. Nor do they question whether these values, beliefs or expectations are aligned with their truth.

Over time, we learn to be at war with our bodies, to fight our minds, to suppress our emotions, and resist our intuition.

Many people go their whole lives never finding home within themselves.

And if you are not at home within yourself — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually — you will never feel at home anywhere else.

Over the past 11 years, I have seen this pattern play out countless times with my clients.

Finding Home

Despite being mired in uncertainty over the past several months, I have been more grounded than ever.

Rather than feeling uprooted, I feel a sense of homecoming: I am moving back into myself: the body, mind, and spirit of my true nature. This needed to happen before I could be at home without the structure of my home that I’ve known for 13 years.

The timing, of course, is perfect.

Returning to Our True Self

Tonight is the start of Rosh Hashana, the Spiritual Jewish New Year. The period from Rosh Hashana through Yom Kippur is known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuva, the “ten days of return.”

The blasts of the shofar wake us from our trance of life so that we may begin the journey back to ourselves.
This is a time of deep introspection and reflection; a time to examine how we have lived our lives, to question the values, beliefs, and expectations that are guiding us. This is how we begin the process of returning to ourselves.

Rosh Hashana is also a celebration of the anniversary of creation, and all creation begins with destruction. The journey of return to yourself is about building our home. We build by tearing down: stripping away the layers of beliefs and expectations, shedding the masks and veils that hide our true nature, and breaking down the walls that keep us separated from ourselves.

This is the deep soul work that we do to journey back into ourselves, to feel at home in who we are.

When we learn to make a home within ourselves, then we can live anywhere.