Leave-Taking and the Journey of Here

In each case, it's not merely the journey; it's also the leaving of home that seems to be key to the process. In each case, they left the home of their parents, or uncles, and left unaccompanied by family to their diverse destinations.

 

Certainly, their destinations were diverse. Mohammed went to a cave in the Arabian peninsula, Jesus stayed pretty close to home between Nazareth and Jerusalem, the Buddha wandered pretty far south into India, and Rama -- don't get me started about his journey! 

 

Or were these destinations so diverse, after all?

 

An early leave-taker -- perhaps one of the first of the notables -- was Abram. We see in Genesis 12:1 that Hashem (one of the names of God) tells him, "Go for yourself from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you." 

 

One compelling interpretation of this passage, specifically, and leave-taking, generally, suggests that the journey is never really to "there", but is always about "here". From this view, the invitation is to leave behind the largely unconscious patterns of our youth, our family, and perhaps even our culture, so that we can fully arrive in our Unique Self, our Unique Here.

 

So, from this view, a leave-taking practice might first involve the contemplation of the strictures of your history that keep you from coming into your own. In contemplative meditation or dialogue with a teacher or friend, explore the constraints on your that keep you from living the life you are meant to live. Journal about them; get a sense of the ways in which your natural movement and expression are constrained by them. It may serve you to do this over a period of time, perhaps weeks or longer. Keep before you the central question of this phase of the process: "what is the nature of my unique leave-taking?"

Then, as you get a sense of what the constraints of your "father's house" are, begin to formulate what your unique life would be like without them. Allow your imagination to explore the possibilities. Engage in conversation, with your inner voices, with friends, with teachers, about what a day, a week, a year would be like in this life that is the fullest expression of your Unique Self. The central question at this phase is, "what is the nature of the Unique Self that is the destination of this journey?"

 

With time, the journey from the Land of Historic Constraints to your Unique Here is likely to emerge. It may involve a life-changing move (geographic, career, or the like), or it may simply involve a fundamental restructuring of your perspective on your current life. In any case, it is likely to involve a basic letting-go and taking-up that will take both courage and the support from a community of loved ones.

 

This is no summer vacation to the beach. Indeed, this is no ordinary journey at all, this Journey of Here. Once embarked upon, I suspect you will find that the journey continues endlessly, but not as a way of getting from here to there, but instead as the result of you living from your Unique Self in the here and now.

 

As Marc Gafni recently said, "Liberated consciousness is to take the journey that is not to get there, but is the natural expression of being here."