'What does it feel like?'

-What does it feel like? – she asked.

-Mmm… You know, I forever struggle to describe it. And it’s frustrating. It’s inside of you and you want to be able to tell people, to share it with them, but no attempt to describe it so far felt like I could do justice to it :/

-Go on, attempt again.

-Well… It’s good. It’s… It’s as if you suddenly FEEL something you always knew. And the FEELING hits you. It’s not a gradual realisation or arrival at knowing; it’s a sudden, all revealing dawning of KNOWING. You know when you’re reading or watching some detective story with lots of twists and turns, and you keep on guessing ‘who dun it’ or what happened, but you continue lacking conviction, as to whether your guessing is right. And you’re jumping between different versions of ‘maybe it’s him’ or ‘maybe it’s her’ or ‘maybe this is what happened’ with various degrees of conviction to each possibility? And then, as the end nears, the unravelling picks up pace, until all is finally revealed, and you’re like, ‘Oooooh…’ It’s a bit like this, only on a visceral level, not simply intellectual. The ‘thinking’ becomes ‘knowing’. Where you are finally FEELING it to the degree of KNOWING, and the only words you can utter at that moment, ‘Ooooooh, I finally get it’… And it settles inside you; it becomes the essential foundation on which EVERYTHING else rests.

-It sounds a bit like a EUREKA! moment?

-Yeah, it’s like that, only you not only KNOW, but FEEL it in the depths of your body.

-So what is that feeling like?

-It’s warm. Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘heart opening’?

-Yeah, I have. It’s a bit woo for me, though.

-Yeah, it was ‘woo’ for me, too, for a long time. It used to do my head in and I would roll my eyes when I used to hear that phrase flippantly thrown around; it was meaningless to me. Until then; until it was revealed to me.

-So what is this ‘heart opening’ like then?

-It’s warm. It benevolent. It’s light. Yes, light… As in ‘not heavy’; not as in ‘not dark.’ That’s the most acute and prominent feeling of them all, the lightness. When you observe the guarding layers peel off and float away into oblivion, and what is revealed is this loving essence that only desires to feel safe. And light. And it’s innocent, child-like. And finally feeling it fills you with the most unbridled, unburdened of joys where it feels as if your heart is swelling up in your chest, as if it needs to burst out of the rib cage so it could envelope you all around. Imagine yourself carrying a heavy load, uphill, downhill, down a seemingly a never-ending hostile track, with no respite in sight. The carrying of the load wears you out, but the lack of prospect of you being able to put it down wears you out even more. Sometimes to the point of resignation. Like it’s never going to end. Like that’s all there is and all there will ever be. Like there isn’t a light in the proverbial tunnel.

-Yes, I know what it feels like…

-And then, suddenly, just when you resigned to it, you suddenly turn a corner and see a place that you recognise is yours. And your step slows down as you approach it, carefully, in disbelief. In disbelief because, by now, you lost faith. But with every slow step, while still carrying your burden getting nearer and nearer to that place, you start feeling this child-like – the lightest there is – joy and hope stir. And you’re careful at first because you made the mistake of giving in to what turned out to be false hope time and time again. But still, it rises. And as it rises, you feel your shoulders straighten off their own accord under the weight of the burden. And, with every now even slower, yet more steadfast step, you observe yourself starting to slowly slide the backpack straps – one after the other – off your shoulders. And you’re a little overwhelmed by the conflict between your mind thinking and your soul’s newly found knowing as you observe it happen in real-time, but you cannot help but recognise it as true. Recognise it not in reason, but in your whole body, in your viscera. And it’s exhilarating but not in the temporary excitement kind of way but in the ‘Oh my, I’m home’ kind of way. In a, ‘Finally, I can rest this burden for good for I am home’ kind of way.

-Wow. That sounds powerful.

-It feels powerful. And it’s something, once you KNOW, you won’t un-know. You cannot unknow because that knowing isn’t new. It’s something that has always been inside you, only the layers of guards that had been imposed from outside in the course of one’s life had buried that knowing deeper inside. That’s why, once the guarding layers have floated away, rather than like you learnt something new, it feels like recognising, Like recall, only not that of the mind, but of body and soul. That’s why it feels like home. And it suddenly feels safe and light. Because it’s home.

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