It's a beautiful sentiment.  And each of us can relate to this desire to retreat to the familiar.  Each of us can relate to this desire to go home.

In our losses, in our uncertainties, in our fears, in our betrayals - as individuals and as an entire society - something in us calls us to our traditional religions, to our old habits, to our old politics, to the comforts of our childhood homes.  Something in us calls us to our Mother's arms.

Something in us calls to the comforts of that which has been.

But ultimately we find inadequate inspiration in our traditional religions, ineffective healing in our old habits, diluted solutions in our old politics and little comfort in our childhood homes.  Even our Mother's arms are not as we remembered.

We return to that which has been only to discover that it no longer exists.

And this is as it should be.  As a great teacher once said, one cannot step into the same river twice.

You see, the sentiment of going home - beautiful as it may be - is an illusion with its roots dug deep in ignorance of spiritual principle.

We spend our lives waiting for heaven.

We spend our lives waiting for another place - a pearly gate, a fishing hole, a country club, an all-you-can-eat buffet in the sky - a place in which we will finally realize some long-awaited joy.

But heaven doesn't exist as another place.

And we spend our lives waiting for another time - a future moment at which we'll be rewarded for adhering to some behavioral code during our time our earth - a moment in which we will finally realize some long-awaited satisfaction.

But heaven doesn't exist as another time.

We made up these myths of heaven.  The human being often makes up myths to accommodate for his lack of mature understanding.

Let your first prayer in all things be for a consciousness which can support all the good you desire to experience.

This is the prayer which will catapult you from a life of unreliable spiritual parlor tricks to a life of steadfast serendipitous wonder.  And the only thing you'll have to relinquish to experience the latter is the illusion that you know what's best for your life.

The Buddhists and the Baptists, the Muslims and the Methodists, the Atheists and the Agnostics - each is forever praying.

And I am forever praying.

And you are forever praying.

I could say that each of us is forever offering our thoughts - mindful or mindless, with great intention or with no intention - to the impartial and limitless creative potential of the universe for its recognition and response.

And if you can entertain such an idea, the only appropriate question becomes, for what do you pray?

We have control issues.  These control issues find their roots in the mistaken, fundamental belief that we live life when, from a corrected perspective of some spiritual distance, we realize that life lives us.

From a corrected perspective of some spiritual distance, we realize that we’re just along for the ride.

We’re such egotistical creatures.