The Threads of Longing

This week's blog is going to be a little messy because it's about an on-going journey and well, journeys rarely go as planned. In the weeks to come I will be writing more about this- defining terms, sorting seeds, untangling threads- but for now, I'm going to let it all be a little messy and tangled- like life.

There’s a line in a Jann Arden song where she sings with her heart in her voice, “I. . . . never wanted anything so bad.” It always tugs on me. I trust the truthfulness of the feeling- the longing- behind the words. I know, I know- advertisers use our longing to sell us things (and no, my longing for peace and beauty will not be met by a shiny new vehicle even if the ad shows a lone car skimming silently along a coastal highway past lush evergreens to the strains of classical music), and we often mistakenly interpret our deepest longing as being for something less essential and more transitory. But I have faith in our longing. I have faith that if I connect with my longing and follow that thread deeper and deeper into the essence of what my soul aches for, it will take me home, it will guide me in my life, it will allow me to offer who I am to the world.

Over the last few years, whenever I’ve heard Jann Arden sing those words, what really bothered me was that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what I wanted “so bad.” I didn’t know what I longed for. I had lost the end of the thread, had disconnected from my soul’s longing.

Oh, I still wanted, but it was a smaller, tighter, grasping, not the heart-opening longing that is more like a prayer than a project. I wanted to have more fun and less fighting in my marriage. I wanted my husband to be happy. I wanted him to want me. I wanted us to deepen the intimacy and create a home where we could both do our creative work. I wanted to be physically well. But eventually, even these became more ideas than a heart-knowing. Mostly I started wanting for certain things to stop. I wanted the pain and exhaustion in my body and heart to leave. I wanted the anger and recrimination in the relationship to stop. I wanted the endless trying to cease.

When we lose touch with our soul’s longing, we lose our way. We stop dreaming. We start surviving and eventually we are ambivalent about even that. For the last few years, if someone had asked me what I really wanted I would have had to consider who I should ask.

Many spiritual paths talk about wanting as the root of suffering. Certainly, being attached to having things a particular way when we do not control a great deal in our lives or the world can lead to bitter disappointment and endless trying. But our everyday wants- to get to know someone we've just met, for a good night’s sleep, to have an object of particular beauty- can direct us deeper, can help us find what’s important to the soul. We have to peel away the layers. A seemingly superficial desire to be liked by someone may reveal the very real human need to feel connected to others, and beneath that a longing to feel at home and held by something larger that is both within and around us- to experience belonging to a sacred wholeness- whether or not we are being liked or approved of by others in this moment.

I am making my way back to my own longing. Rereading old journals from ten years ago when my ex-husband and I got together, I can see how I started dropping the threads that had previously led me back to the longing I could trust to help me stay true to my own course in life. In some of the writing I hear a voice I hardly recognize as my own talking myself out of knowing what I knew about myself. On some level, despite all I had learned and all I knew, I must have believed this was necessary to be in this relationship. And, given who my ex and I each were and are, the choice may well have been between being with him or being deeply with myself. As I read about my struggle to sidestep this choice I can see that I tried to stay connected to and guided by my own essential longing, but I missed all the cues, all the signs that something else was happening. I am not blaming my ex for this. But gradually, to be with him, I disconnected on some essential level from who I am.

Very humbling, a little frightening, and simply human.

One of contemplative prayers I do daily sets the intention to be aware of my needs, wants and desires. Having asked to be aware of these three I then ask to see how my needs (that which sustains life on all levels) may be met without doing harm, to know the deepest desires of my soul that they may guide me, and to come into right relationship with my wanting. Because wanting can be tricky. Right relationship with wanting is about being conscious of wants as they arise- wanting to lie down and rest; admiring a pair of new boots; being drawn to talk with someone- and being aware of how they point to deeper desires which may or may not be met by the person or situation or thing we want in this moment. I may decide to lie down and rest, talk to someone who attracts me, or buy those boots. But being conscious of my wants and being able to discern the difference between these and my deeper soul-longing means I will not suffer if there's no immediate opportunity to rest, if the person I am drawn to doesn’t want to talk to me, or if the boots are too expensive for my budget.

Being conscious of our wants means we are less likely to fall into being unconsciously driven by them. Right relationship with our wanting means remembering that what matters most is our conscious connection to the deeper longing of the soul that can guide us in being who we really are.

It’s good to be home.