Recently I went to the movie theater for the first time since 2019 and saw Roadrunner, the documentary about Anthony Bourdain.
It wasn’t a thriller. We all know how it ended. 😭😭😭
Honestly, the movie made me sad all over again. Anthony Bourdain was such a radiant light in our world.
(Quick PSA -If you are feeling suicidal – please contact the suicide prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-8255)
After seeing the film, I found myself really trying to understand Bourdain’s thinking. I kept returning to a line one of his friend's said to describe him, “Tony was a searcher.”
In his career as a TV host, he traveled across the globe but never seemed to find what he was looking for. (That's how the movie portrayed it anyway.)
Perhaps that line stood out to me because I have done a similar thing, been a seeker.
I moved across the world and back looking for love, for belonging, for some place where I felt like I fit in.
Deep down, one of my shame stories was that I felt like an alien in this world. Everyone around me seemed to know how to successfully play this game of life. It was only me who lacked the instructions.
It wasn’t until decades later, when I read this lesson from A Course in Miracles, that I realized I’d gotten it all wrong.
“This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return... you feel an alien here. (W-pI.182.1.1-4)
That was me totally! But then it goes on to say:
"We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home."
I'm not alone! Everyone feels like this, OMG!!!!
Then it continues:
"He [meaning me and you] goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him." W-pI.182.3.1-7)
I did this over and over and over...BUT
"When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home. (W-pI.182.8.1-3)
Those words were balm to my soul AND helped me have a massive shift.
It was not me who was the alien. It was this world – the illusion we are living in.
And there is a home where I belong. That home is LOVE.
When I realized this, it was like a huge sigh of relief.
It helped me relax more into the space inside of me that is my true home and refuge, the space of love that exists in each one of us, the love that can be accessed when we connect to our heart space.
And as long as we continue to seek out there in the world, we will never find it.
Because what we really seek is within ourselves. In other words, we are what we seek.
This was a radical truth that has taken me years to really accept but has helped me unhook from looking outside of me for the answers, for belonging, for peace, for love, and wholeness.
So what do you say?
Are you ready to resign as a seeker and accept that you are the love you’ve been searching for?
Are you ready to realize that despite feeling like an alien, it is really the world that is unreal?
For there is truly nothing wrong with you or lacking in you.
How does that feel?
I hope you feel liberated. I did.