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Happy Hour: I Am Home

Introduction

Great, hello and welcome everyone. It's lovely to be with you. It's lovely to see you and feel your presence from all the different time zones you're joining in from. It just makes my heart smile to feel connected to you. Oh, it's a lovely community.

For today's practice, we are focusing on coming home—coming home to our bodies, coming home to our heart, and treating ourselves kindly. This sense of "I'm home, I'm home, I'm home" can be a concept that we can bring up anywhere. Even when we're not at home, we can feel at home in our bodies, feel at home in our minds, and feel at home with who this person is.

It can be helpful to borrow the sense of being home from an actual sense of being home. Maybe you feel at home in nature, or maybe there's a particular place in your home that you feel particularly cozy and at home in. I know that there have been times that I felt completely at home in my bed. There's a sense of coziness and comfort, like, "Oh yeah, I'm home. I can rest, I can let my heart relax. It's okay, it's okay sweetheart, it's okay dear." There is a sense of rest, a sense of ease, a sense of nourishment and kindness that can accompany this feeling of being home.

So, the idea is being home in our heart, being home in our bodies, and bringing this sense of kindness and ease. That's the theme, the invitation for us to explore, and I will have more invitations in the guided meditation. So let's begin.

Guided Meditation

Settling in your body. If you need to move and shift to arrive, to settle in this body...

Coming home as if we were a turtle with our home carried on our backs, our body being our home. Coming home to our body. Coming home.

As our thoughts might have been going to the past and future, inviting our thoughts, our mind, to come home to the body. Come home with kindness. It's a generous invitation to come home. Coming home.

Collecting ourselves. Collecting ourselves. Coming home.

Feeling our feet, our legs, if you're sitting on a cushion on the earth.

Feeling our hands on our lap. Feeling our hands touching one another. Coming home to the sensations that are easily felt. They help ground us, help make us present. Coming home.

Coming home to the amazing sensations of our body on the cushion or the chair. Inviting our body to relax. We're home. We're home. I am home.

I am home. I am home.

If it feels right, maybe even saying it out loud once, dropping it in: "I am home. I am home. I am home."

Coming home to the in-breath. This in-breath is home. My home.

Don't leave home. Be at home.

This out-breath, this one, just this one is my home.

Stretching, stretching your heart, your mind, your awareness.

At home inside, within the out-breath. This out-breath. In-breath. This out-breath.

Expressions of my home. I am home.

And if a piece of the mind wanders to a thought, to a plan, past, future... come sweetheart, come home. Kindly, so kindly, lovingly. With all the love in your heart, invite your awareness to come home. Your body here. Here. Come home sweetheart. Hello.

Resting, being nourished with the breath. A calm peace, a loving presence of being at home in yourself.

And I love being home in my body, my heart, with the breath. With this breath.

Loving being here so much. Just here. Nowhere else. Being home. Stretching, stretching my heart, my mind. Feeling nourished in this moment. Nowhere else to be, nothing to do.

No matter what is arising, what is present in the body and the mind and heart... cultivating the joy, the nourishment of being here, at home. In my own shell. The joy of being here.

Just here. Not FOMO, the fear of missing out, which is common in our culture, but the joy of being here. The joy of missing out. Cultivating the joy of missing out. Being right here at home. JOMO. Cultivating JOMO.

So nourishing this moment. Peace.

Breath. Lovingly here, nourishingly here.

Softening the body, relaxing the body. Any tension or tightness is corrected. Finding our way home again. This moment. Lovingly present here. Simply nourishing our heart, our mind with kindness and presence.

Watering the flower that is me with care. Coming home. This breath.

And if there are thoughts, if self-judgments are arising, challenges... it's okay, welcome them home. The home of your heart is not a dungeon, it's a castle of kindness. Trust it. Trust it.

Let yourself be at ease in your home of kindness, and let everything be here. Judgments, thoughts, emotions can relax. There's plenty of room in this castle. They can all be here. And you can rest.

Coming home. Being at home.

In our heart, our body. Our spacious mind. Home.

And as we start to turn to end this sitting period together... savoring^[1], even if just for one moment, you felt at home. You're feeling at home in your body and your heart, in your mind.

Maybe in this moment you appreciate the joy of being here, just here. This amazing moment of being alive in this body. Being home in your heart.

And this life that is yours, all the ups and downs, the gifts, the blessings, and just being home.

The sense of uprightness, dignity. Claiming, reclaiming your home.

This is my home. I am at home. I'm always at home. It's always here. Never too far. May I remember. As I remember in this moment.

And I'm home. And may I love myself, give myself permission to be home.

From this place of love and acceptance for myself, invite others to feel at home with me. To feel cared for. To feel relaxed, at peace. Offer them my home. My ease, my goodness.

May I know, may I remember to be at home with love, with care for myself. May all beings everywhere feel at home in their bodies and their hearts with love and care. May all beings, including myself, be at ease. May all beings wake up, including myself.

Reflections

Thanks everyone. Thanks for your practice.

Thanks for exploring this idea of mettā^[2]—kindness, cultivating well-being. There's a sense of coming home, coming home with kindness. The spaciousness. Coming home, offering ourselves a sense of home, and others as well. The same way that maybe we come home from a long trip: "Oh, I'm home. Ah, how nice to be home. Ah, my heart's relaxed." That sense of ease, and tapping into that.

Remembering how that feels, offering that to ourselves—the kindness, care, being at home in our bodies. This home of ours, this mind of ours, as I said, does not need to be a dungeon. What if we see it as a palace of kindness with plenty of space?

Q&A

Welcome back everyone. The breakout rooms are closed, so we have some time. If you have reflections, actually, I'm going to change the settings so that you can type in the chat if you like. If it's private to me, then I will read your reflection but not your name. And if you want to type it to everyone, you can do that, or you can raise your Zoom hand if you haven't shared in a while. I would love to hear from you. Your reflection is not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of everyone.

What did you discover with this practice of mettā, loving-kindness, as being home? Coming home to the body, the mind, claiming our home, right here, right now, in the present moment.

Ali, please.

Ali: Hi Nikki. Nice to be here. Actually, in our group, all three of us were really resonating with your phrase of "home, I have arrived," and I brought that saying from Thich Nhat Hanh^[3]. That's what he says, you know, there you have it in the different Dharma centers^[4]: "I am home, I've arrived." We were just kind of flowing with love into that phrase: "I am home. I have arrived." It was beautiful.

Nikki: Thank you so much, Ali. This is lovely for me to hear. Thanks for sharing that, and also sharing that from Thich Nhat Hanh. I hadn't connected it, but yes, Thich Nhat Hanh says, "I am home." That's right.

I'll tell you now, since you shared this, where the inspiration for today's practice came from. Because I was away, as you might know. I wasn't here for a few days, and I just arrived late last night from a very intensive trip. Today, this morning, as I was stretching and being on my yoga mat and just lying down, I had a sense of, "Oh, I'm home." I actually said out loud, "I am home," and oh, my heart just relaxed feeling that. "Oh yeah, I'm home. Ah, I'm home, it's so nice to be home."

So there was just a sense of arriving in my body, in my heart, and in the moment. And then realizing, actually, in many ways, I carry my home with me always. And yet, there's this inspiration from being at home, this memory of being home that we can take. So that's pulling the curtain back on what the inspiration for today's practice was—from my own practice to Happy Hour.

Other reflections? What did you discover? Anything else you discovered? I see someone's puppy. That just made me happy, to see your puppy being at home. Such a sweet, cute puppy. Any other reflections about this practice? What worked, what didn't? All good. Dawn.

Dawn: Thank you Nikki, thank you Sangha^[5]. Good to see everyone. You mentioned something to the effect that "thoughts are not a dungeon," and I was right in the middle of these negative thoughts. It really did feel a bit like a dungeon, like I couldn't get out. It gave me a little bit of perspective to think of them as broader. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for that.

Nikki: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you reflecting on how this invitation actually in real-time was helpful as there were challenging thoughts. It really does feel like a dungeon, getting collapsed in it, and then opening up: "Oh yeah, there can be that realization which can bring in a lot more ease and spaciousness." Lovely, thank you, Dawn.

Nell, I see your hand. Please.

Nell: There's something that happened in meditation when you said, "Absolutely, this is a castle." Something shifted. Actually, those negative thoughts and unwanted thoughts, they used to have fangs on me, and suddenly, with that kind of space and home, they melted away. No more fangs, they just come and go. So I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah.

Nikki: It absolutely makes sense! Thanks so much for sharing that, Nell. This is beautiful, that just makes my heart so happy. Yay! Beautiful, thanks for sharing that insight, and the way that your heart, your mind found more space just realizing, "Actually, this is a castle." My mind has the pattern or the tendency to think of it as a kind of collapse. But actually, if I realize really how spacious it is, the difficult, self-judgmental thoughts relax. They melt away. There's a lot more space. This is a spacious castle.

So remember that, Nell. This is something that works for you, and it's always here. Just remind yourself when it gets crowded or cramped, "Oh sweetheart, dear Nell, this is a castle. Your heart, your body, your mind is a castle." This is great. Thanks always for sharing.

Barbara, I see your hand.

Barbara: Thank you. For me, when I think about home, it's the warmth of the community of being. It's not so much my house, because I'm not living in a place that I've been in for years and years and years, and yet I'm home. I'm home because I'm surrounded with people I love—my friends and family, my community. They are that sweetness that makes my heart feel at peace.

Nikki: Beautiful. Thank you, Barbara. I love it. It's not so much that home is a place, but home is a concept. Home is the sense of love, the sense of care, community that surrounds you. So anywhere is home.

Barbara: Exactly. That's exactly right. And here in the Sangha too.

Nikki: Yeah, that is just beautiful. Exactly. So well said, and as you said this, it also reminded me of something that I think happened earlier today in my own practice. For me, I've lived here for a few years but not that long, and sometimes I've said that—this may sound strange—my mom who passed away some years ago, she gave me a carpet. Being Iranian, being Persian, carpets are really important to us. So lying on the carpet she gave me, that's home. I feel surrounded by her love. Home is where this carpet is. Where, of course, the carpet may burn in a fire, but there's just a sense of being surrounded and cared for by love. So that's home. Thank you, Barbara, for expanding that even further, the idea of being home.

So we can feel at home in our bodies, in our minds, in our hearts, in our communities. And can we feel that this is a castle? This is a castle of love. I love "castle of love." Spreading real love^[6], held in love, being at home.

And the last reflection here says, "My body is my temple. I feel like a beneficent monarch within this body of skin." Oh, that is sweet. Beneficent monarch.

So thank you all. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for your reflections. Thank you for supporting yourselves, supporting one another. May we all feel at home in this body, in this heart, in this mind for this limited time that is our lifetime. May we really, truly, every moment feel at home exactly where we are. May all beings be well. May all beings be free, including ourselves. Thanks everyone.