Module 2:
DISCOVERING THE HIDDEN POWER OF LONGING
Recommended Reading
Teaching From Patricia
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation from the Beloved...
- Rumi
When you understand the difference between longing and desire it will change your life.
Opening ourselves to longing activates powerful forces that will move our lives and life itself towards higher possibilities of love and truth. Longing arises from a dimension that is deeper than your individual sense of self - deeper than your soul. It arises from the unknown and comes through us into this world.
Longing comes from the divine forces of love and evolution, itself, bringing new potentials into existence. Something greater waits for us, needs us to awaken and surrender to its power, love and creativity. If you pay close attention, when you begin to feel the longing you can sense that it's a two-way affair. Something is longing for you and through you, and that is where the immense power (and beauty) lie.
Generally, we focus on our human desires. People ask us what we want and need. We are told to feel our desires. Desire, however, comes from our limited sense of identity, from our survival and egoic patterns. Of course, it’s important to understand ourselves and care for our needs, but there is something so much greater that can move everything and create possibilities you can’t imagine.
In life, our desires give us a kind of menu to order from. Longing puts things on the menu that don’t exist inside our current reality. It reveals potentials that are waiting for us to open into, potentials that don’t fit into the life we have, but transform us and attract what we need to live from our true purpose in being here. Longing can be counted on to shatter the compromise in our lives and activate our true potentials.
Longing has an interesting quality of making us restless and hungry for something we can’t explain.
In the practice you are about to do, focus on listening to the edges of your experience. That’s where longing is trying to lure you and bring you beyond where you are. In this practice, I suggest that you let yourself feel, long for, what you truly want, for love, life and humanity, even if it seems impractical or unlikely.
What if it was possible for humanity to move beyond the divisiveness, narrow mindedness, selfishness, deceit, fear and laziness that we assume is human nature? What if it was possible for humanity to exist inside a shared consciousness where love, kindness and compassion was normal? What if our human ambition was collectively devoted to what I call divinizing our world or making it more good, true and beautiful?
Can you sense the deeper evolutionary longing within you, that is tired of power structures, insensitivity, competitiveness and other elements that we assume we have to live inside of with acceptance?
You may discover a smoldering passion and a fire within you that wants to risk everything for something greater that honors all of who you are and all of what you can give.
Real revolutions begin with longing. I have a dear friend whose Aunt Betty was Betty Friedan who wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, a book that ignited the modern day women’s movement. Betty felt a restlessness and longing for something more than the traditional roles available to her as a woman. She was not alone in experiencing the stirrings of discontent but fortunately she allowed the longing to emerge and burst forth into the light of day. She wrote the book and welcomed others to awaken similarly. The longing grew in everyone and began to create a new reality that is still evolving today.
Now we need to welcome the longing for how humanity can evolve, how we can actualize a higher order of human relatedness.
There’s a whole new dimension of love and consciousness that will shape our world that comes from unity, intimacy, and interconnectedness, if we can embrace it.
Longing leads us to the unknown, to something greater that is reaching towards us. Longing allows us to grope our way forward and to be a vehicle for evolution.
Let yourself long for how love could be in life and in our world.
Go beyond acceptance and sense into the realm of possibility.
Evolution has taken us from light to matter to life on Earth, from being single-celled creatures to Shakespeare and space travel.
Don’t you think we can actually evolve beyond our competitiveness, selfishness, and fear?
Let yourself long for the kind of world we would actually feel at home in.
What’s possible between us?
What’s possible for you?
Deepening Exercise
This practice is to invite and awaken the longing that is under the surface, to allow it to come out of the shadows and emerge fully into your heart and your awareness. Remember we usually suppress our longing because we fear that if we truly feel what is there while being stuck in a reality we think we can’t do anything about, we will just be more unhappy. It takes opening ourselves and really letting it wake up… that’s when the forces begin to realign with what is truly possible.
If you are doing this with a partner, have them sit across from you and begin with silence, looking into each other’s eyes and sensing a place of connection. Hold that connection as you take turns doing the practice.
If you are with a partner, ask your partner (or journal on) one, two or all of the following questions:
- What are you finished with?
- What are you pushing away from?
- What are you tired of?
Bring into your consciousness what is usually on the periphery of your awareness. You don’t have to be accepting or politically correct or spiritually inspiring.
If you are with a partner, the person asking the question just listens and asks one of the questions again, when it feels appropriate. Then switch positions and for 5 minutes your partner outflows with the answers to the questions.
As you listen to each other, silently encourage and welcome whatever is being shared.
Then, ask your partner (or journal on) one, two or all of the following questions for another 5 minutes:
- What is calling to you?
- What is pulling you?
- What is flirting with your attention and interest?
If you are doing this with a partner, after one person has shared, switch so both of you have had a chance to speak.
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