Category: Love’s Longing

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Love’s Longing Update

I have made a major update to Love’s Longing, one of my earlier books, first published in 2016. It has been carefully re-edited and given a fresh presentation, with beautiful new images throughout and a cleaner, easier-to-read format.

Love’s Longing is special in that it holds many stories from my own life—from childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, as well as from family life and the years that followed.

Most of the stories are not particularly dramatic. They are the sorts of things that make up all our lives: something funny a child did, something unexpectedly wise someone said, a fear that had to be faced, a change of direction no one saw coming, a relationship that taught something, or a difficult experience that eventually revealed a different way forward.

The stories create an energy field through which the larger spiritual ideas can be felt rather than just known in the mind. We all have these stories. The details may differ, but beneath them lie profound archetypal human experiences that lead to even more profound spiritual experiences.

Love’s Longing
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We Love With All Our Heart

Somewhere along the way, there develops within the soul a yearning that can no longer be ignored; a craving for the great Love affair. We feel it drawing ever closer. It is the greatest of them all. It cannot fail. It is all-consuming. It is incomparable. It is the love affair with our own true nature and the source from which it comes. The desire is in all of us but, more often than not, it is ignored for other interests. We wrestle with each interest, trying to make it work, growing with each adventure until the light has grown bright enough for us to reach for it. 

We love with all our heart, in every way that we can love, but the heart is not burdened. We learn to keep it light and pliable. It has space. It breathes. It waits on Life to give instructions. It sings with sweetness when the winds are soft and warm. It stands with calm patience when the storm is brewing. It lets go when death and seeming endings have left their irrefutable mark. It moves. It heals. It hopes. It allows Life to be lived in the safe, fertile, and still inner space where it grows stronger and more compelling every day.

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Healing Heartache

Much of our heartache comes not from other people but from our expectations of others and what we feel they should bring into our lives. If other people truly caused our heartaches, we would have little power to heal our hurt. Healing would primarily be left to the passage of time. Even then, the big heartaches could easily be reignited. 

It’s no point arguing with the heart. It doesn’t help to talk reason. The heart doesn’t even hear. It doesn’t know that language. It is instinctive—for good and bad. Whereas the mind will try and patiently think through the reasonableness of any situation, the heart is powerless to do so. The heart is all feeling and flows from a great line of experiences and expectations, both remembered and forgotten.

The most pressing thing we generally want from other people is a sense of love and security. It is a wonderful feeling to bask in the warmth of another’s affection, attention, and protectiveness. It is equally as un-wonderful to feel that the source of that love has somehow betrayed us. Once hurt, we can go through life shutting people out or keeping people around but blaming them. We can close the door of our heart. However, without our heart, we become an empty shell. Perhaps, an intelligent empty shell, but empty nevertheless. 

The heart carries the beat of life. 
It makes existence meaningful and beautiful. 
The heart bypasses language. It doesn’t lie. 
Everything moving and powerful has heart.