Longing

breathe
Originally uploaded by LunaSol

Some people still may be gripped with the grace, in many ways, of longing.
And like any longing, any longing you have at all,
the energy of it starts here:

“I”… “long”… “for”… whatever it is – love, enlightenment, God.

It matters not.

It’s the energy of the longing that starts here. And you can feel it.
What I want.
What I long for.
So generally that’s the direction we go,
for as long as we do. We go that direction.
Cause that’s the way it seems to be moving.

Because the mind interprets longing in terms of desire:
“What I want,” as opposed to, “What I long for.”

I can want to have chocolate ice cream.
But, I’m probably not going to long for it.
They are two different experiences in a way.
But the mind turns longing into desire, “What I want.”

Longing is not really the same as wanting or grasping although it is almost always addressed that way.
Longing is really a call.

That’s what longing really is.
As if the Self is calling to Itself.

And what would you do, what do you do when someone calls your name?
If they’re behind you and they call your name, their energy is also starting from their mouth and going right past you right in that direction.
Just imagine if every time someone called your name you looked in the direction the voice was traveling, rather than in the direction the voice came from.
We’d never meet anybody…

And yet with longing that is the relationship one has.
It starts here, the energy goes out here, and we go right with it.

But instead, you just trace it back.
Don’t take it as desire so much as a call from the Self to the Self.
And you go to the source of the call.


Instead of I want - whatever it is.
It’s whatever you want.
“God”
“want”
“I”

And that last step is crucial, that last step before the longing arose.
That’s the source of the longing.
Once you come back, longing disappears.
So all of this is really the backward step…

Spirituality in large part, in actuality, is the backward step.
Not grasping for what you long,
but listening from where you long.

Backwards, backwards.
Not using awareness so much as turning and seeing with awareness,
so that Awareness recognizes itself…
That’s Awakening.
That’s returning to our Self.

Adyashanti,
July, 2007, at the Omega Institute.