Course Tuition: $80.00
All Sickness Is Homesickness.
I remember being struck when I heard the phrase for the first time, several years ago. It's the title of a book by Dianne M. Connelly, a practitioner of Traditional Acupuncture. While Ms. Connelly is primarily concerned with physical healing, she is deeply aware of how dissonance in our psycho-spiritual and physical environments affect and influence our physical well-being. And I would add that the obverse is also true: when we are not well physically, the other aspects of our lives suffer, as well.
As I pondered what it means to be home, to feel at home, I remembered Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home. Hestia is the one who keeps the sacred flame of the home burning bright. She is the one who is honored so that order and harmony will be maintained in the domestic realm.
Hestia is knocking. She longs to return.
It seems to me that in our contemporary world, Hestia has been relegated to the back room in our lives, locked away out of sight. The realm of domesticity and home are often, in today's world, considered banal. Many see domestic chores and duties simply as drains on our time and energy that could be better spent in more "productive" pursuits, activities with a better return on investment.
Even those who know the value of homemaking are faced with fast-paced, hectic lives with layer upon layer of responsibility. How often can we simply relax in a home that soothes and nourishes us, without being beset with guilt? There are always so many things on our to-do lists! How often do we spend an afternoon or evening in the kitchen, preparing a nourishing meal from fresh, basic ingredients? What about the community around us? How many of us actually know the people who live nearby, much less the names of the trees and various insects and birds and flowers that surround our homes?
This course will take a look at your relationship with your physical home. But beyond that, we will look at other aspects of what it means to be at home. At home in your own skin, for example. What is your relationship with your body? Do you treat it as a sacred vessel, a home for your spiritual explorations for the time that you walk this Earth?
Are you at home with your work? With your form of livelihood? With your primary relationships? With your form of spiritual practice?
Of course many of us chose to leave home as we knew it, for good reason. Could it be that it's time to have another look at that choice? Perhaps there are elements that we dismissed or eliminated that are worth re-integrating into what we call home now that we are conscious, aware adults. And it's been said that all great stories fall into two categories: either someone leaves home, or someone returns home. That's it!
This course will be presented as a series of email lessons with journaling suggestions, and specific tasks that will engage you in your rediscovery of the Hestia archetype in your life. You will also receive guided meditations that will help you to discover and re-establish your own deep connection with Hestia.
In many ways, we live as refugees, cast out often by our own choices, from everything that we call home. We no longer tend our own sacred inner flame. Many of us don't even know where to look to find it. If it's time for you to look at these issues, and to find your way back to your own "Sacred Hearth," I invite you to join me in this exploration, to journey back to your center. If you find that the flame has been extinguished in some way, you will be invited to re-ignite it. It's never too late.
Please email me at agelessgraceacademy.com if you have any questions about the course.
