012: The Second Doorway: Connection is the Food

{A QUICK EDITORIAL NOTE: Unlike most Substacks, The Neurobiology of Connection is the serialized manuscript of a forthcoming book of the same name. If you are just joining us, you will derive most benefit from starting at the beginning, as concepts build upon one another. Should you wish to pre-order the book, which will be available in hardcover, you can do so here.}

There is a genius waiting to come through you: the genius of Nature. Yet this genius, to strike, must come through the spark of who you are: the snowflake signature of your innate vitality. It must pass through the chamber of why you are here. In the Tzutuji'l Mayan dialect of Santiago Atitlan, in present-day Guatemala, the word that is translated as to live is N Kasea. Yet what N Kasea really means is 'the ember yet burns.' This ember is who you are: your particular genius resides where this ember is fanned by the flames of Nature.

There is a Native American saying that reminds us that the farthest and most significant journey a human can ever take is the 18 inches from the human head to the human heart. And this journey, its consummation, is where your sovereignty and your destiny await. What guides you on this path is yearning. It is the same force that guided Odysseus, man skilled in all ways of contending, on his journey back to home and hearth over 3,000 years ago, for Odysseus, even then, was stranded by alienation. Odysseus is modern in this regard. This yearning for home is a force that the Greeks called nostos. We say that home is where the heart is, but to configure this notion in a slightly different way, which puts the emphasis in the proper place, find your heart and you have found your true home.