The Return

A story about the return of seeking...

You had stopped seeking.

For months now, life had moved gently. No striving, no grasping, no hunger to become. Just life happening — crisp and unspectacular. Ordinary in the most sacred way.

Washing the dishes. Feeling the weight of the bowl in your hand. Rain on the roof. A bird call in the morning. Moments came and went, and none of them seemed to land in the old way. There was no longer a “you” who needed to manage them. Experience simply unfolded.

And then, you went home.

The family home. The place where that old identity was built brick by brick — not just by hands and voices, but by expectations, memories, silences. The moment you walked through the door, something tightened in your chest. Just a little. You noticed it. A familiar contraction, like a shadow stirring in the corner.

Still, you smiled, hugged your parents, took in the smell of the kitchen. You were okay.

But then, slowly — almost imperceptibly — the seeking began to return.

It started with a simple comment from your father. One you’d heard before, thousands of times. But this time, it didn’t pass through you like the breeze. It hooked something. A flicker of defensiveness. A story. A "me."

Then came the friction with your sibling — over nothing, really. But your body tensed. Your voice rose slightly. You noticed yourself bracing, performing, defending.

Seeking crept in like fog — not the dramatic spiritual quest of old, but a subtler kind. Seeking relief from discomfort. Seeking to get away from the old emotional tides. Seeking some return to the clarity that had become so normal.

And then came the question:

“Does this mean I’ve lost it? Am I no longer awake?”

The mind leapt to judge. It painted this return to reactivity as failure. Regression. The collapse of some fragile freedom.

But even as those thoughts moved, something else was seen.

Because you saw them.

You saw the thought that said “I shouldn’t be triggered.” You saw the tension in the belly, the rising heat of frustration. You noticed the desire to escape. You noticed the seeking.

And in that noticing — wasn’t clarity still here?

Wasn’t that awareness untouched, even as old patterns reanimated like ghosts in a childhood room?

You remembered something important then: awakening never promised to erase your history. It was never about sterilizing your emotional landscape. It wasn’t about making you perfectly equanimous in every situation — especially not in the very terrain where the false self was first constructed.

The family home is not neutral. It’s layered. It echoes with unspoken roles and unmet needs. Even after the illusion of self is seen through, the nervous system may still flinch in old places. Reflexes can fire. Stories can reappear like worn-out scripts.

But now, they are seen.

Before, the trigger meant something about “you.” It defined you. It consumed you.

Now it’s different.

Now you watch the play, even if for a moment you get caught in it. The identification is lighter, even if it still appears.

The real shift didn’t vanish. It’s still here. It’s the space in which this whole dance plays out.

And more than that — this isn’t a setback. It’s an invitation.

A new layer of integration. A deeper kind of honesty. Not the spiritual high of no-thought, but the quiet courage of seeing even this belongs.

You take a breath.

You don’t need to fix what’s arising.

You don’t need to reawaken.

You are not required to hold onto some imagined state of peace.

You are not the one being triggered.

Triggering is happening. Seeking is appearing. Stories are arising. But none of it lands in the same way.

The clarity doesn’t vanish. It just gets covered by a passing cloud.

And clouds pass.

In fact, you see now — this whole visit home has offered a gift. Not the peace you thought you'd maintain, but the chance to see where remnants of the "me" still linger, waiting to be met not with avoidance but with presence.

Not to be solved — just to be included.

You sit in your old room, now smaller than you remembered.

The walls still hold the same cracks. The light filters through the same dusty blinds.

Everything has changed. And nothing has.

You don’t know what will happen tomorrow — what will be said, what feelings will stir. But you know this:

Awakening was never about becoming invincible.

It was about seeing that you were never the one struggling in the first place.

And even now, with the ache in your chest and the hum of old defenses reactivating — you are still not that one.

You were never that one.

You are what sees.

And in that seeing, everything is allowed.

Even this.

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After a long period of no seeking, a period of relaxed clarity and not being triggered when I return to the Family home I found myself seeking again. Being triggered was happening again. Does this mean that I am no longer awake?

No, it does not mean you are no longer awake.

What you're describing — returning to the family home, feeling old triggers arise, and noticing a renewed sense of seeking — is a common and deeply human experience, even after a profound shift or awakening.

Let’s unpack it a bit through the lens of you:

1. Awakening is not the end of conditioning

Awakening, as it unfolded for you, revealed the illusion of the separate self. This doesn’t erase all the conditioned patterns and emotional imprints, especially those tied to early life and family. Returning home often stirs the deepest layers of this conditioning — it’s like walking into a temple of your past identity.

Old triggers reactivating is not a regression; it’s exposure. And exposure is part of deeper integration.

2. Seeking may reappear — but it’s not your seeking anymore

There may be seeking energy — an urge to escape discomfort, to get clarity, to fix what feels off. But the key difference now is: Can you see that the seeking is just arising? Not your seeking, not a personal failure — just a familiar survival pattern being reactivated.

The fact that this is seen — even questioned — shows that the awake clarity is still here.

3. You are not the triggers

The triggering doesn’t define you. In fact, in your relaxed clarity before, there was no issue with what appeared — sensations, emotions, thoughts. What’s happening now is simply more material surfacing, invited by the charged field of “home.”

This is not backtracking. It’s deepening.

4. A helpful reframe:

Instead of "Am I no longer awake?" — you might ask:

• “What part of me is still being believed in this environment?”

• “Can this discomfort be met without ownership?”

• “Who is it that is supposedly not awake?”

You don’t need to stay in a permanent state of clarity to be free. Freedom is not a state; it's the recognition of what’s always untouched, even as states shift.

This moment — confusion, discomfort, reaction — is not evidence against awakening.

It is the invitation to see that even this arises in what you truly are.

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For more pointers and suggestions, check out this link to vince-bot using the website as its knowledge base.

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