All human endeavors are ultimately attempts to regain that connection, attempts to return home, to go back to where we feel contented and without worry, where we feel things are just the way they should be. Everyone is working on the same task of returning home, whatever their projects and enterprises. But trying to return home is a very tricky and subtle thing, because we are estranged by the very way that we see ourselves. It is not as though you were thrown out of paradise as a punishment for something you did wrong; nor is it a matter of doing some exercise or going through some difficulty to regain contact with the Origin. To regain the Origin is, in a sense, the process of annihilating oneself, because the very way that we think and the way that we perceive ourselves is what disconnects us. As we have seen, what disconnects us is the delusion that we are a self with a separate identity, so it doesn’t matter what we learn, what we attain, what we gain, how far we go—these things will not reconnect us. Even talking about connecting is a linguistic formulation that is not accurate, since the disconnection itself is a delusion. Although the disconnection that we sense is not ultimately real, we experience it as real psychologically because reality is such that our beliefs determine our experience. If we believe that we are independent entities, we will experience ourselves as independent entities, and hence, as disconnected. So the return home to our Source is a matter of education; it is a matter of seeing through certain beliefs. But in letting them go, you are letting go of the very fabric of who you believe you are, so the process is very difficult, very subtle, and very radical.

In exploring the question of Holy Origin and the consequences of its absence, we are dealing with one of the dilemmas of being a human being. Human beings have two options: being in contact with the Source, or being in a state of disconnection from it. Being disconnected from the Source is not the loss of a luxury, of something extra—this loss lies at the very heart of human suffering because this Source constitutes your most real nature, the true center of who you are. Without it, life is deadened in all its aspects and becomes meaningless. We don’t simply lose a sense of peace or contentment, or the intimacy of feeling at home with ourselves, but we also lose the source of all of our real capacities that we need to deal with and live our lives fully and correctly. So this is not a small loss or simply a philosophical one—it is a very practical and immediate one. Working on regaining the Holy Origin—realizing our unity with our Source—is not supplemental, something to do when everything else is taken care of. It is basic and fundamental. Not to do it is like trying to live your life without your insides, your bodily organs—what kind of life can you live? Without the connection with your Source, in which your life is lived as a continuity of Being, life becomes a prolongation of hollowness.

When the soul arrives at her absolute home, recognizes her true beloved, and realizes it as her ipseity, many insights, realizations, and feelings spontaneously arise. One's life begins to show its overall pattern, seen from the perspective of the inner journey home. This culminates in the personalization of the absolute ipseity, where we learn to be a human being, a person, and to still abide in the absolute. This is an unusual and rarely known realization, where the vastness of the mystery, without ceasing to be the mystery, finds itself walking with two legs, touching with human hands, speaking with a mouth, and so on … what spontaneously arises, without self-reflection or reasoning, is the feeling that the soul is at the end of a certain phase of life and work. She feels she has accomplished the task she had set for herself, or is in the last stages of finishing it. She recognizes her worldly accomplishments and her realization of her true nature. But the feeling is more general than the specific accomplishments. It is a sense of finishing something. There is a feeling of space or room left, open for new possibilities.

Being at home is one of the most characteristic feelings the soul receives when beholding the luminous darkness of the mystery. The soul frequently has this feeling the instant she feels herself abiding in its luminous darkness. It is not a conclusion, not a reasoned understanding, not the result of understanding or consciously knowing something about the absolute. It is a spontaneous recognition that happens to most people when they find themselves in the absolute. We have the instant and joyous recognition that this is our true home. We finally feel completely at home; we understand why we love to feel at home, and why it is so difficult to feel at home. The soul realizes that she has been estranged from her source, exiled from her home. She realizes that she has been roaming the universe looking for her home, feeling uncomfortable and unsettled, lost and bereaved. She has been looking mostly in the wrong places, in manifest objects and places, when her home is within, totally within, within and beyond all of manifestation.

I, as the soul, behold the absolute appearing in the heart, occupying it as its rightful resident. The heart beholds the absolute as the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever beheld. It is dazzling and intoxicating, so black it is brilliant with blackness. It is nothing, but it shimmers and shines in such a dazzling way that I can see it has a crystalline quality. It is an infinite black crystal absence, brilliantly shimmering. The radiance is so bright it illuminates the cave of the heart the way a lightning storm illuminates the night. The lightning illumination ricochets in the cavern of the heart with such power I can hear it thundering and exploding. The beloved now claims the heart fully. It has taken full possession of it, as its own throne. The beloved is not an other, it is the true dweller of the heart, my source, my ultimate self, and the ultimate essence of everything. I am struck by the realization that in this experience I perceive the absolute for the first time in the heart, by the heart. The absolute is perceived inside the soul, by the soul. The heart reveals itself to be the abode of the absolute. More exactly, the heart is the window to the absolute. I have experienced the absolute many times before, almost continuously, but not in the heart, and not through the individual soul. A new feeling arises, a completely welcome feeling that expresses a deep realization. I feel I am finally arriving home. This mystery, this majesty, is my home, my original place. It is what my heart longs for and loves more than anything else. I realize I have always loved this mystery, and always longed to melt into it, even though I did not know consciously what I loved and longed for. I knew I loved the truth, but I was not aware that the truth is ultimately this inexplicable reality. I see that I have always felt exiled, that I have always been seeking to return home. As I recognize the home of the soul, I recognize the totality of her search and its true meaning.

The inner journey is many things. It is a journey of adventure and discovery; a journey of maturation and completeness; a journey of truth and authenticity; a journey of love, devotion, passion, and union; a journey of compassion, giving, and service. It is a journey of realization of the nature of soul and reality; a journey of insight and learning; a journey of fulfillment of life and human potential; a journey of liberation from suffering and limitation; and a journey of inner freedom. Yet, all these reflect one thing, and only one thing. For the journey is essentially a journey home, to our original primordial ground and source. To be at home is to be whole, contented, and at peace, for no reason but that we are abiding in our true nature. There is no need then, no restlessness, no stirring of dissatisfaction, no ambition for anything at all. Abiding at home, we can live any life that fits our circumstances, and it will be a life redeemed, where one’s fulfillment is identical with serving others. Such connection can take us through the vicissitudes of life and its unavoidable adversities, with grace, dignity, and maturity.

We tend to think of depth in terms of feeling, thought, and knowledge. In the inner journey home we find out that these are actually part of the surface, for they are an expression of the horizontal world of everyday life. We discover that, in fact, true nature in all of its qualities and dimensions stands for depth in our experience and life. We experience the unfoldment of our soul as taking our experience deeper because we are following the dimension of depth. When we arrive at the realization of the absolute we understand depth most clearly and distinctly, for it is the dimension where we know depth most specifically. The absolute, we can say, is pure depth. It is absolute depth because it is the source of all. So our home turns out to be our depth, and our depth turns out to be our beloved. And it is absolute depth because it is nothing at all, complete absence, total nonbeing, which is the ground of all being. We discover that to be at home is to be home. To be in the depth is to be depth. To unite with our beloved is to be the beloved. To be at home as an autonomous self is a contradiction; for by becoming an autonomous self we got lost, and became estranged. To be at home is for the soul to recognize that the absolute, her home, her beloved, which is her depth, is also her nature and identity.

We can view the inner journey home as comprising two parts, the journey of ascent and the journey of descent. The journey of ascent includes the journey to presence and the journey with presence, as described in chapter 15. These two journeys include the discovery of the soul, that of essence in its aspects, and finally of the diamond vehicles. The last part of the journey of ascent is the revelation of the five boundless dimensions. The integration of each of the five dimensions is like a journey on its own, similar to the two first journeys. It includes understanding the body, emotions, and thoughts on this dimension. It also includes the integration of the soul, essential aspects, and diamond vehicles. The essential development of the soul proceeds all over again, now within a new ground and attaining a new identity, the boundless true nature itself. The journey in presence includes this part of the journey of ascent, i.e., the integration of the five boundless dimensions, but also the journey of descent. The journey of descent includes the integration of the five boundless dimensions into a unified whole, recognizing and understanding them as dimensions of the same true nature, coemergent in such a way that they simultaneously structure the full experience of nondual self-realization. In the journey of ascent the soul climbs up the ladder of Reality until she reaches the most subtle dimension of true nature, the absolute. Then she descends by going back and integrating the various dimensions she has passed through in the journey of ascent into this most subtle dimension.