Our Home Is Where the Heart Is

Like many familiar truisms, the saying, “home is where the heart is”, contains the truth of an underlying principle. The more we contemplate its words, the more we penetrate the world of meaning and thence into the vaster dimensions of the world of significances. Individually and collectively our home is where our heart is, and critical world events are serving to open wide the doors of the human heart through which compassion flows.

Before television, the internet and worldwide media became accessible, our sense of home was generally limited to our individual, personal experience and relationships. Now, however, intrepid journalists in war zones take us into the homes of the victims of the appalling wars of oppression being waged around the world. Our hearts are stirred awake to see firsthand their experience of deprivation, destruction, and the impact of open conflict. Many journalists are also bringing us directly into the lives of the millions suffering from climate disasters, negligence, and abuse.

Wave upon wave of revealed suffering is breaking upon the shores of the heart of humanity and eroding the barriers of its past perspectives of reality. As these barriers dissolve the heart opens and expands, its compassion embracing all people, animals, and land in need of care around the globe. Our sense of family and home then expands beyond our immediate environs to embrace all the human family, the animal kingdom, and our beautiful planet as a whole.

This greater sense of “home” is what the soul experiences – in its kinship with all souls. And in the light of the soul, the awakened heart perceives “the love that underlies the happenings of the times.” The Tibetan Master gave these words from an affirmation to remind and strengthen our soul view:

Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the soul control the outer form, and life and all events,
And bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of the time.
Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love. Discipleship in the New Age, Vol II, page 146

Behind the outer shell of form appearance, the warmth of the human soul radiates eternally. That shell is becoming increasingly transparent as the veils of ignorance separating our worldly consciousness from the kingdom of the soul are dissolved by the flow of love through the awakening human heart. Through separation we have learned oneness as the poet, Kahlil Gibran, reminds us in The Prophet:

Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled.
Yet now it cries aloud unto you, and would stand revealed before you.
And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”The Prophet – Kahil Gibran

As we open to the realm of the soul the eternal spark within us is reignited. These fiery sparks are increasing and spreading in service to our world and the divine purpose for its being. Surgeons care for the wounded in ruined hospitals, rescue workers risk their lives to save others, aid workers bring needed humanitarian supplies, advocates and counsellors support the abused and traumatised, and journalists report the true happenings even under fire. Generous and caring hearts are persisting in service to the true world eternally underlying the misunderstandings, limitations and ignorance of surface events.

These heroes are not deterred by the fear of death. Something beyond their individual persistence inspires and strengthens them. That something is eternal and accessible to all and enters the world through each open heart. They remind us that as we serve the needs of others the walls of our home expand, and we glimpse our future home. The Agni Yoga teachings call us to the future:

…And what cleanses the spirit more completely than thoughts about the welfare of others? And what steels the armor of steadfastness more strongly than the wish to lead others to Light? And what weaves a better smile than the desire to see the very last child laughing? So I urge you to think about the future, to place each day a pearl in the necklace of the Mother of the World. And so, concisely and straightforwardly think about how to beautify the hearth of the world…” Leaves of Morya’s Garden II, 301

Looking at our current worldly home we may see what is under threat of extinction or destruction. Yet reality is much greater and as old forms crumble new ones are arising from the ashes. What we call death in the outer world is an entry into that vaster reality where forms no longer hide the truth. We learn this through experience in the crucible of living experience. The Tibetan Master explained:

…An incarnation is a definitely determined period (from the angle of the soul) wherein Experiment, Experience and Expression are the keynotes in each incarnation.  Each successive incarnation continues the experiment, deepens the experience and relates the expression more closely to the latent unfolding divinity.” The Rays and the Initiations, page 337

The full significance of the pain we suffer and of the eventual death of the body is realised as experience draws us into the inner eternal presence of the soul, in resonance with the spark at the heart of all things, the divine Presence. The poet, Kahlil Gibran, describes the beauty of this process that carries us all into greater light, love and life:

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and are a cloud.
And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.
The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.
And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.
To the ocean of Love and Beauty—-to God.
                       ~ From “A Tear and a Smile” by Kahlil Gibran