Longing

Longing

April 19, 2014

Usually longing is directed outward and applied to get satisfaction. The satisfaction is attributed to relations, esteem, status, possession… which all have to be good. These are outer appearances that must deliver proof of a successful someone.

Consciousness is lured in a trance of looking for satisfaction in external phenomena, to compensate the lack of inner Truth. Longing becomes a searching for 'value', which, as an engine, keeps on propelling the attention in an outward directed movement. The mind becomes a slave of the search for happiness, happiness that has to be found in 'the outer world'.

What can be reached this way turns out ephemeral, dependent on circumstances… the more you try to hold it, the quicker it fades. Frustration comes in, together with despair, exhaustion, anger and disappointment. Resistance to life builds up, everything seems pointless.

Often longing is channelled, and directed at clearly described goals, which need to be guarded. In many traditions longing is a 'bad' thing, which has to be annihilated. There are, however, always clear voices that invite us to follow the longing inward.

These voices recognized longing as the great Longing, or the Yearning. The Yearning turns out to be an inner life-force that wants to be discovered as That, which is before time always the Now. From this living Now the Yearning emerges, as it were, to turn itself around inwardly, and recognize itself as the self-luminous Being.

In stead of being directed outward - propelled by acquired fear - the Listening can take place and the Calling can be heard. The Calling invites the attention inward and takes it to the Unknown. Activity turned outward is afraid of that… the Light of Awareness burns all assumptions and convictions, nothing remains to take hold of.

Following desire inwardly reveals the Yearning… the divine Yearning. This Yearning is the living Now, the direct Being, or the Being that - unlocalized - is always free and to which everything appears.

Realizing direct Being relaxes the mental activity. Expression, then, comes from the joy of life, where earlier it had to bring assertion of an alleged identity. Direct expression is like music leading attention inward, to where Light reigns and Peace is.

Longing is always a longing for being home. This being home is a totally relaxed Being, in which the frantic activity of the outwardly directed mind stops. The Peace, which suddenly is noticeable, is the true Nature. It is always this Peace to which the yearning goes out… the great Yearning is always for the true Self. This true Self is the timeless Being-Home.

The phenomenon 'being home' gets all kinds of associations during youth. These seem to belong to a someone that wants to feel at home in life… someone and life seem apart. Attention is caught by an activity of resistance and longing, as a result of youth-associations which are projected outward. Consciousness seems to be in a surrounding… which is identification with a focus.

Through this mis-identification, longing turns outward in a search for happiness… the surrounding becomes responsible for inner well-being. Resistance to the surrounding (life) is resistance to the unconsciously projected associations from the past… longing for love is longing for the affinity of the parents, and actually a longing for safety… for God or the Source.

Safety is a realizing of inner peace, a complete relaxed being. This is what effortlessly is, when attention falls back in the direct true nature, the immediate Being, God or Self. Consciousness is always this immediate Being, also when attention is entangled in the activity of the false self.

From the standpoint of the false self, safety - warmth, trust, love, feeling at home - seems possible only with a perfect partner, a house in rural surrounding, when the right status-symbols are there, etc. The Freedom of That which is before everything and appears as everything seems forgotten.

The pivot of (the longing for) all these external factors, is the identification with the separate me, or the tense focus that sees itself as an entity, separated from everything else. Belief in this fictitious figure falls apart in recognizing longing as a divine yearning for Light or Love.

Awakening is the realization that longing for Light is not a person, but the self-luminous Being, the Being that was looking for itSelf, but erroneously was looking 'outside itself'.

Awakening is the end of the illusion of the separate self, by which also the split in 'inner-outer' or 'subject-object' falls away. This brings in an enormous psychological shift, which turns everything upside down: I seemed in the world… however, the world is in me. The projecting stops, the world turns out an appearance of light. Being ís the Safety that was longed for.

This is what is meant with: the world is an illusion, Brahman alone is real, Brahman is the world.

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