You’ve Never Left Home

If you talk with me long enough (or sit with me in ceremony, or even just meet me for tea in Brooklyn), you’ll eventually hear me say: “You’ve never left home.”

People usually pause. Something inside softens. Sometimes they get a little emotional without fully knowing why. The phrase lands somewhere deeper than the mind.

So what do I mean by it?
And why does it matter for psychedelic work?

Let’s begin here:

The End of Seeking

The reason a cookie tastes so good, or falling in love feels so good, or music melts your heart, is not because those things add something to you.

It’s because, for a moment, without noticing, you stop seeking.

Seeking is, in essence, the subtle belief that something is missing. It’s the sense that the next thing will complete you, validate you, or give you permission to rest.

When the cookie hits your tongue, or a lover touches your skin, that tension collapses. The mind stops grasping. The body softens. The internal soundtrack of “something is missing” goes quiet.

The feeling that comes with that, what you mistake as coming from the object, is simply you, without the strain of seeking.

Presence.
Bliss.
Wholeness.
Home.

You think the object delivered it, but the object only paused the grasping long enough for you to feel what was already there.

Why This Changes Everything

What you call “happiness” is actually the natural state that reveals itself when seeking falls away, then the logic of chasing fulfillment dissolves.

The cookie didn’t give you anything.
You merely felt yourself, unobstructed.

And if that’s true, then fulfillment isn’t something to get. It’s something to stop moving away from.

You don’t have to wait for things to go a certain way.
You don’t have to perfect yourself or heal every wound first.
You don’t have to arrange your life before you can feel whole.

You can simply stop seeking right now and notice the peace that’s already here.

In every moment you’ve ever tasted real contentment—true ease, true love—seeking was absent.

The feeling wasn’t created. It was revealed.

The Wholeness You Keep Touching

People often come to psychedelic work hoping for breakthrough, catharsis, or a dramatic shift. And yes, those things can happen. But beneath all of it, something quieter is unfolding:

You keep touching the wholeness that was never gone.

It shows up when your face softens under the medicine.
When you breathe again after years of holding.
When you stop resisting what is and simply allow.

It’s the same wholeness you felt as a child:

For me, it was sitting by the fire on Christmas morning.
Presents under the tree soon to be opened.
Warm. Safe. Held.
Nothing missing.

The feeling, in other words, that I was home.

That sense is universal.
It’s not nostalgia.
Its realization.

A realization of your nature.

You Think You Left

Somewhere along the way—through family dysfunction, heartbreak, addiction, trauma, cultural pressure, self-improvement, achievement—you absorbed the belief that you are a separate and incomplete individual. That you had to get back. That you were somehow behind in life.

But what if “being separate, incomplete, or behind” is just another form of seeking?

When you identify with the seeking mind, you feel separate.
When seeking drops, even for a breath, you DON’T feel separate.

In fact, you realize that which has always been: complete, whole, at home already.

Nothing changed.
You simply stopped looking outside of yourself to be fulfilled.

The miracle is always like that: nothing changes, and yet everything changes.

Ceremony as Remembering

In the arc of psychedelic work (preparation, ceremony, integration), you are not becoming something new. You are remembering something timeless.

You are remembering how to open without fear.
How to feel without bracing.
How to trust without controlling.
How to be without the pressure of becoming.

This is why the most meaningful moments in ceremony are often the quiet ones. Moments when the mind stops pushing, the heart softens, and something familiar rises from beneath the noise:

“Oh… this is me.”

This recognition doesn’t introduce you to a new self.
It lets you return to your original one.

Not Apathy, But Freedom

Dropping desire is not apathy.
It doesn’t mean withdrawing from life or giving up pleasure.

It simply means no longer seeking wholeness through objects, people, accomplishments, or spiritual experiences.

When desire is rooted in lack, it becomes suffering.
When desire flows from wholeness, it becomes play.

You still eat the cookie.
You still fall in love.
You still build your life and follow what moves you.

But you are no longer searching for a home by taking.

Life becomes expression, creativity, and kindness.

You’ve Never Left Home

When I say this to clients, to the people who sit across from me brave, trembling, hopeful, I’m not speaking metaphorically.

I’m pointing to something literal.

There is nothing easier, or more effortless, than being what you are.

You cannot leave your nature.
You cannot give it away.
It cannot be taken from you.
You cannot be disconnected from what you are made of.

The mind wanders.
Awareness does not.

The story shifts.
The ground remains.

And that ground is what you feel every time seeking falls away:

That quiet sense of safety.
That subtle okayness.
That soft warmth beneath all the noise.

Home.

Not a destination.
Not a future achievement.
Not something to earn.

A presence you have never left.
A wholeness you’ve always been.