I noticed I was circling the same ground so don’t feel I had any else to say, and that remains true, however I came across a Richard Wagamese meditation and though I share it. I include my reflections and included a Krishnamurti to add contrast of approaches… though you may wish to let the poem speak for itself…

Home is the slumping drop of luggage on floors that bear the ghostly footprints of your motion. The light is a lambent thing that feels right on your shoulders, so that walking here after time away is a convergence of energies. Past, present and future allow you floating passage on the way to a collection of “now’s” that beat in your chest, settle on you lightly, glitter in your eyes and lodge in your mind as reflection, introspection and awareness. The shadow of the one you were before you left occupies a space in the corner as you re-enter and engage fully in simple, effortless things you do every day with what you come to recognize as love.” – Richard Wagamese – Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations

When you are down at the very bottom, completely empty, when there is no longer any hope, no anymore ‘me’ to achieve, to become—then there is a sudden ending of sorrow, and in that emptiness there is a totally different movement, which is love.”— J. Krishnamurti

We travel so heavy, mistaking the weight of our baggage for proof of who we are. But healing begins the moment we finally let it drop. Moving past the sharp fire of deconstruction, we land softly in the eternal now, discovering that the emptiness we so deeply feared is actually the only place we are truly home…

There is a moment upon entering a room after a long journey where the physical weight of travel meets the hard stillness of the floor. We drop our luggage. It collapses with a heavy, unceremonious slump. In his meditation, Richard Wagamese catches us in this exact, vulnerable threshold. He reveals that we are not just dropping leather and cloth; we are dropping the desperate, accumulating momentum of who we think we are.

To cross this threshold, we must first face what Jiddu Krishnamurti so fiercely demanded: a radical stripping away of our baggage.

All our lives, we travel heavy. We pack our identities, our anxieties, our spiritual titles, and our past conditioning into heavy bags, dragging them frantically from one moment to the next. We mistake the weight of this psychological luggage for proof of our existence. We fear that if we let go of it, we will vanish. The mind treats the prospect of emptiness, the utter stillness of having nothing to carry and nowhere to run, as a terrifying, barren void.

But both the Elder and the Philosopher suggest that this void is an illusion born entirely of fear.

When Krishnamurti forces us to deconstruct our illusions, he pulls the rug out from under the ego to show that the container we are so afraid of emptying is already the source of everything. When the baggage is stripped away, the fear goes with it. You realize that you are not the traveler desperately gripping the handle; you are the wide, unconditioned space in which the journey is happening. The void is not a hostile abyss waiting to swallow you. It is simply the ending of psychological time.

This is where Wagamese’s fire meets the hearth. He reminds us that once the deconstruction is complete, what remains is a grand, quiet homecoming.

As the egoic shadow slumps into the corner, you step into an eternal, lambent light that fits perfectly on your shoulders. The frantic ticking of the clock dissolves into a seamless, golden collection of “now’s” beating inside your chest. By letting the false self die on the floor, you discover that the emptiness is actually entirely full. It is an effortless, sacred space where you can finally engage with the world with what you come to recognize as love.

Do not fear the stripping away. Drop the bag. Take off your shoes. The ground beneath you is already home.