A PATH OF LONGING

-in a constant search for meaning-

While painting a mandala and joking about myself in this sacred place, the Welikande Yoga Retreat, Sri Lanka, I cannot see what's coming to my table. My body starts feeling it before my mind can understand — something only the intelligence of the heart has the strength to do fully. A sort of heat, a sort of vibration, that enlivens the smallest internal channels of a tired and eager-to-hide body. Similar to a nourishing rain, it penetrates my body, making room to reach places that are protected yet still open to receiving.

Today's sunrise reminded me of my first step when I started this Walk 22 years ago — my favorite number, the master number that describes the union of twin flames acknowledging their spiritual connection and mission.

(In another blog, I will share more about it)

A dreamer's journey — me — also started with a dream. Not as in wishing to reach somewhere; at that age, I didn't have clear intentions, maybe just a gigantic desire to belong — though not to be part of a territory.

A night dream changed all my linear life planning, followed by many others and by flesh-clear images of things that would cross my path at some point. They were not so easy to decipher and mostly announced difficult events. Over the years, I understood that their role was always to protect me from not-so-pleasant happenings in a nearby period of time.

The journal I had in front of me on a simple morning, offered by my uncle, marked the beginning of it all: my decision to start walking this Walk. It all starts with a choice. In time, the foolish human being realizes it is a choiceless choice — or not. But what great joy he lives if he allows the guidance.

We are a constant choice in a constant search for something.

How many times have you thought about it?

As for me, these words are the glass of water I choose to hydrate my body with after every challenging hike and fall. It's the kindest reminder, in which failure, agony, and success have no attachment to themselves — they come together in great manifestation.

I have no linear recollection of events, no recipes, and no outstanding monologues of how my Walk unfolded all these years. Instead, I have a promising beginning of white hair and unhidden wrinkles. I also add to this valuable luggage my brokenheartedness, my clumsiness, my ever-loyal companion — imperfection — and the most precious one: the faded desire to have it all figured out.

Actually, this article is inspired by a short dialogue between two ladies attending an art workshop in this beautiful retreat. They were briefly mentioning their strong preference for perfectionism — this part of me that was losing its authoritative voice throughout the kind, non-dual process of healing. However, it brought to my attention another precious voice of my soul: this constant call of longing. My infinite need to belong to something that’s not met yet; maybe having a shapeless ruin in my DNA about it, or maybe imagined by a loyal friend of mine — the unhealed ego.

Yes, it's here where I AM in my Journey, in a humane seeking — which sometimes is found in the wisdom of healing that gently shows me it’s all in front of me, within the seeking; and other times I run after it on the same treadmill as any other human. The ego constantly whispers into our restless minds that we need to look for something else beyond the here and now, and that we have to reach a destination always different from the previously imagined one — or maybe such an idealized scenery that it's almost impossible to touch. The unhealed ego adores creating glamour.

And yet, the newness of this blessed place where I am in my process of healing is that I become more aware of my falling into this conceptualized idea and my liability to slow down or overrun my inner rhythm.

Often, I freshly perceive the nuance of coming back to the original self when I meet another as a meaningful reminder of my arduous Journey, and receive him in plain intimacy rather than as a possible subject participant in my narrative. Although that someone can be part of my narrative, I meet him in the greatness of his own individuality, not only in alliance with my egotistical desire to connect.

The truth that humbles me is that this path of mine has been chosen from a profound place of longing, where the longing kindly guided me to walk my walk instead of running with eyes closed, and above all to choose myself instead of that always-better one. Therefore, longing does have a nourishing part and a kind guidance when it is not manipulated by the needy, unhealed ego — when heaven and hell are not places to point at, and when we stop judging journeys that are beyond our limited understanding.

Can we live with a longing that we cannot heal, you may ask?

With all my honesty, I think you can — but it feels remarkably unkind to ourselves, and in time, when avoided, it can become entangled with grief, creating a dry and unstable soil for our nourishment. Through a process of healing, the individual starts meeting longing under mainly two natural states — either as a reminder of the ongoingness of existence, or as something not being embraced — which sadly guides us away from living our lives in presence. We search for “there,” “what ifs,” and “that.” The good part is that the process helps you, after a while, to have the kindness to notice your absence — to notice your illusory mind. In the end, this is the sleep we are trying to wake up from — the one that creates dreams under a fearful mind that doesn't want to experience life as it is, and chooses only to explore it under certain limited conditioning.

The great news, dear human, is that our limited egoic condition was never meant to be eliminated, improved, or fixed. All this exploration of reality as it is exists for us to receive more, to become fat with life, to enlarge our consciousness, and to receive infinite lands that are hard to fit into our narrow choice of being only on one side — preferably the side we think is better.

So what do I do with myself, knowing of the persistent existence of my longing?

I bow to it. And ultimately, day by day, I integrate its companionship in my humane Walk to nowhere.

Does longing get tired eventually?

Hard to say — but being allowed to exist, it takes care of my barefoot legs full of scars. So why should I reject its companionship? I receive it. In the end, the “homecoming” is celebrated with all the parts wholeness offers to us.

Bless this Great Journey we were invited to take! I truly honour it!

LONGING is NOW when I write of melancholy, being conscious at the same time of my constant instinct to avoid melancholy.

And here I AM, in my path of longing, that holds me gently when I ease my mind through writing...

Dear you,

may you always be on the inner quest!