Leaving Home to Arrive Home
Eight years ago, I traveled to Costa Rica for a week-long retreat centered around ayahuasca, breathwork, yoga, and deep inner exploration.
Like many people who are drawn to these experiences, I went seeking something. You might call it a Divine encounter. You might call it awakening. You might call it healing.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for. I only knew there seemed to be a place people spoke about. That place beyond ordinary life. A place where greater peace, greater freedom, and greater love existed. And I wanted to know it for myself.
On the first evening, I lay on a mattress beneath an open-air pavilion in the Costa Rican jungle.
Night settled around the group as the ceremony began. I was relaxed, open, and curious.
As the plant medicine took effect, I remember making one simple commitment to myself. Don’t turn away. Whatever appears, it is here for you. Meet it.
For hours, I was shown scenes from ordinary moments of my own life.
Every one revealed where I had turned away from what was actually present.
Countless moments where Life was present but I was not.
When someone reached toward me and I wasn’t fully there. How beauty quietly presented itself and I hurried past. Ways I turned away from myself. Living my life while imagining that real life was somewhere else. Times I let go the Mystery and a sense of wonder.
Scene after scene unfolded. Some scenes were so small and ordinary that I might never have noticed them at all. Others were much more significant and far reaching. There was no judgment accompanying what was bring offered.
Only the opportunity to see clearly. And with the seeing came tears. I cried for hours because I suddenly understood what I had been missing.
I wasn’t grieving my failures or feeling concern about hurting anyone. I was grieving the countless missed opportunities for relationship that had quietly passed by while I was looking somewhere else.
The next morning, I walked alone along a path through the jungle.
Trees swayed gently in the warm breeze, providing a gentle landing for the birds who sang beneath the bright sun. My body felt tired with some lingering sense of motion sickness.
A hangover of sorts from a night of traveling through so many landscapes.
Yes, I understood and I agreed.
Almost immediately I heard that same voice laugh. You came here for a magic pill, didn’t you?
Touche. Indeed, I did. I had to laugh. Some part of me believed I would arrive in Costa Rica, meet the Divine, have love break me open, and leave transformed into an entirely new person.
Instead, I was being invited back into relationship with my own life.
The ceremonies continued for three more nights. Each one delivered exactly what it needed.
As I returned home, that invitation reverberated through my being. Now the work begins.
Not the work of becoming someone new. It was the staying within the ordinary moments I was living.
It was the invitation to return to the people in front of me, my own body, the quiet beauty, and the potential to meet the moment as it arrived.
To turn toward the life that had never stopped inviting me into relationship.
Looking back now, I don’t think I went to Costa Rica seeking some mystical state, inner contentment, or existential peace. I think all along I went seeking my own life. And Life, in its mysterious generosity, gave me exactly what I needed.
Not another destination.
A way of returning home.
Peace be with you and with all. No exceptions.
