The Art of Longing, or... Longing Detox

Longing carries visas to lands we cannot travel. We want to. We imagine ourselves residents of some foreign land in which we are happier, loved, satisfied, successful, healthier, and myriad other states of being we do not seem to possess on this soil at this time. Until we make the journey, however, our longing is as close to those foreign states we can get.

However better we would feel in those longed-for lives, longing can actually produce some of that feeling simply by inhabiting our imagination. Our heart receives some warmth, our minds some solace, our bodies some rest. In this sense, longing is a bit like a drug that synthesizes whatever chemicals makes us uninhibited or safe, in love or satisfied. With even these small doses of chemicals coursing through our bodies we may find ourselves behaving genuinely excited or happy, generous or kind, perhaps confident. You see how it can be addicting.

Longing can give voice to our heart’s desire, and purpose or meaning to our current discontent. Longing is often the expression of our best selves as imagined in a fully realized world. Longing can be the standard bearer of what we are most passionate about, of our most noble principles, of our best intentions.

Longing can be an initial source of agency in our lives otherwise constrained by circumstances and life’s oppressions. On the back of longing, we begin to find direction and movement toward what we now feel is possible.

Longing can give us hope; hope in something we feel in our hearts, see in our minds, and believe is real.

Given all of its benefits and all of its power, how could the clear heart of Jalaluddin Rumi pen this about longing?

“There are Lovers content with longing.
I am not one of them.”

Rumi

What a bold admission: to acknowledge his discontent with longing, and with regard to love and lovers, no less. What does it mean to abandon longing when it might be all that we have at the moment? What happens to us when we let go of longing?

I can easily imagine the fear in letting go of longing. We will have not the object of our desire—that is more or less obvious, right?— and, more importantly, we will no longer have the small pool of good feelings we get from the longing. And in some cases, to give up longing is to give up a lifeline: to let go of the longing of a lost love or loss of anyone or anything, is to tear away something within us that feels vital and essential.

So why would anyone (Rumi) ever denounce longing? How could anything replace whatever we gain from longing? Does it mean that there is something we are denying ourselves while engaged in longing?

The answer lies in the nature of longing: there is in longing the suspension of ourselves over this moment, the redirection of our attention as we peer wistfully into the future. Longing reinforces our belief that this moment is missing something we very much desire or require. Longing reinforces that this moment is not enough, that we could not possibly be fully happy or satisfied in this moment without whatever is longed for.

We are denying ourselves in longing, the experience of this moment, of how it feels to be fully present in any moment, especially this one, now.

And here it gets interesting.

First, people often measure their pain in the distance between who they are now and who they want to be, instead. It is easy to see how that seems right. It is a calculus written from the point-of-view of our discontent projecting itself toward what we imagine would be a better moment. Alternately, I believe this kind of pain, this discontent, is measured in the distance from our discontent to the experience of the true self, which is experienced in this moment, now. More simply, our true suffering is the distance between our discontent and this moment, now. We think that what we long for, once attained, will make us happy, etc. What we really long for is the experience of our self. The true Self. It is our resistance to experiencing the true Self that causes all of our discontent and suffering. And, in suffering, I do not mean physical pain. That is entirely in this moment.

Second, there is a trick the mind plays on us when we imagine something we long for, either from the past or in the future. The mind tells us that-for-which-we-long is not in this moment. It urges us to focus on either the past or the future, for it is there we will connect with our happiness. In other words, this redirection to the past or future is designed primarily to insulate us from the pain we fear will consume us in this moment. The mind is commissioned to protect us, even from emotional pain. If we believe that this moment is not enough then we are afraid to experience ourselves in this moment for fear that the discontent, the loneliness, the dissatisfaction will consume us. And to drop into the moment feels too much like we are accepting the terms of our current situation and giving in to them. We might be stuck here in this moment forever, forever unhappy, etc.

So how do we practice a healthy state of longing?

Well, we don’t…longing is longing and by any other name is a means to manage our fear of being forever discontent, unhappy, alone, etc. But, that is not to say that we must discard, repress, or deny any feelings normally associated with longing. The emotions and thoughts that evoke longing are, at the initial state, raw and born within a natural state of consciousness. It is possible to experience these without leaving this moment. In fact, there is something powerful to exist with these in this moment rather than long for these in a different moment. Rumi’s rejection of longing allows him to be fully present with the Self in this moment. He also writes that lovers don’t go searching for their true love, they’re in each other all along. So the journey to your lover is not across time (although it can feel that way) but a journey to the Self. Find the Self and life will place you next to your lover, your true love.

The art of longing is to be present with thoughts and emotions in the present moment and without longing. I know. A contradiction. The gift, however, is the joy of finding the Self now rather than waiting for the time when it is safe to be present. If you are longing for that time, it could very well be that your attachment to longing will keep you away from true happiness.