There is a hero(ine)’s journey that is sparked by a deep longing that cannot be suppressed any longer.
A longing for freedom, authenticity, integrity, true love, or the deep desire to claim what truly belongs to the self—one’s own medial nature, the wild Self.
Longing holds the seeds, the unfurling, and the blossoming of a journey that doesn’t require mastering, conquering, or the slaying of dragons and demons—but rather, a planting of itself, and a coaxing awake of the dragons, who have been lain to rest over treasure troves of gold, so that we may learn how to feed, heal, commune with, and ride them.
Longing draws us into opening through the portal of grief, gratitude, and love that cracks the heart open, so we can recognize and fully receive what it is we are longing for.
For what is our longing without our receiving? Without the recognition of its grace always flowing our way?
This kind of expansion takes risk.
Fully surrendering to what we long for the most, without supplicating the superficiality of a world that thinks if a thing looks like a thing it must be the thing—for what a thing looks like and how the nature of a thing in this life makes us feel in our bones are two entirely different things.
One is a sleeping wildness, and the one untamed and paying attention.
We needn’t get caught up in constantly searching for the next best thing.
We are tuning forks when we can feel that the divine holding us is safe.
We invest a lot in protecting ourselves from our longing, from the liberating growth that lives inside longing’s power.
We fear our grief and our longing as we’ve been taught to fear truly feeling our lives. It’s no wonder many in lockdown are realizing their true unhappiness—a revelatory path to longing itself.
A purely mental way of living offers us the illusion of control.
Power over our internal experience that crushes the spaces of understanding that is the deep ancient wisdom in our bones. We think to avoid how we feel. We mentally process to avoid how we feel. Or, we buckle everything down because we need to just make the best of it.
To resurrect our sanity after a lifetime of trauma and disconnection, we must risk opening to our longing; this may feel frightening because we intuitively know that this opens us to less control—because our feeling nature is wild and free, which we can’t trust if we’ve never met her before.
Our feeling nature is truer than what our ego’s ideal vision is—what our ego pushes for, analyzes, rationalizes, or pushes away.
Our feeling, longing, desire, and grief pull us in the direction of what is most true—where we most need to feel safe, most need to feel love pour over our hearts.
Longing leads us in the direction of our flourishing.
Flourishing takes risk if we’ve experienced a lot of trauma—if we’ve been in survival mode more than we’ve been safe.
We need to learn that it’s safe to feel safe, to tease out the hypervigilance that thinks everything is a lion or a snake, so we can really breathe. Breathe into the tension of life lived being safe, when before it was not, so we can let go.
Our longing can truly take us there.
I remember spending long hours laying on the floor of the Redwood forest grieving, longing, and praying—and being held, filled up, and whispered guidance. One day, I felt more peace and stability, not in any “thing,” but in my capacity to be me.
Now, I write for the trees, the owls, ravens, bears—all the winged and four-legged ones.
We are more like trees than the concrete jungle. Our concepts of well-being shall begin to arise from the same place we come from, not from the treatments we’ve formulated after we laid the concrete, stolen the lands, oppressed souls, and built more walls.
Longing is liberating in a white-washed culture that denies us the power of our sorrow and grief because it knows that the truth that resides in those wild caves is ferocious in its freedom, wisdom, and aliveness.
It’s a steady, strong stand for the preservation of what we now know to be most precious, true, and important.
The darkness teaches what really matters to us. This depth of longing for love, freedom, and magic we innately are as humans is our soul’s rallying cry for ego death and the rebirth of flourishing.
Cracking open to this is scary because who we “think” we are will die.
And, that’s actually a beautiful thing.
Let your longing set you free.
Where you are scared to surrender, tend to the edges of what hasn’t been loved before.
What does that precious part of you that’s never known safe need?
How can you give this to yourself?
~
AUTHOR: DR. NANDI HETENYI
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