talking about longing.
july 2022.
My weekly Heal Haus class usually ends with a short period of group discussion. A couple of weeks ago, one of the participants mentioned that the practice had brought up longing in them. At this mention of longing, I felt something flare up in me, and others expressed the same. So we’ve been exploring this the past couple of weeks and I want to share some reflections here with you too. (Sidebar: I’ve been guiding this weekly class for about two years and meditating with this community has been so enriching. It is online every Thursday from 1:15 - 1:45 pm ET and costs $10 to join. I’d love to see you there).
Longing, yearning, desire, want, whichever descriptor you choose to use, is an active state of being for me. At the moment, my deepest longing is for an intimate relationship. In this current season, I am feeling settled with this specific longing. It is tenacious in my thoughts but it isn’t consuming my life. But let me tell you friends, with the right conditions, this longing has reared its head in unskillful ways, like:
Making myself small and not saying what I need;
Drinking too much and being short with my friends;
Telling the guy I’m loosely seeing that he’s hurt my feelings and entertaining a conversation about the validity of my hurt feelings;
And various other manifestations of believing that I am alone.
The current treaty I’ve come to with this longing is to let go (see: equanimity). Not giving up on experiencing romantic love but accepting my ongoing singlehood as my current condition. When this condition feels painful, I often apply some compassion practice, usually “this pain is real, may my suffering ease.” This helps me to keep my heart open and not seize up around the feeling, remember impermanence and honestly, to kind of get on with my life without this longing defining everything. Cause partnered or not, I have things to do. 💁🏾♀️
My sweet friend Yael (hi, Yael!) has always spoken about longing and loneliness in such a direct and poignant way. In her book What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond, Yael offers perspective on building a sustainable relationship with desire.
In fact, one of the most curious myths about desire is that we think recognizing and allowing it will lead to complete lack of control. If I desire cookies, the logic goes, and I recognize and allow the desire to overtake me, I will eat the entire box and feel sick afterward. A closer examination of desire, however, shows that staying with the raw sensation of desire (the quickening of the heart, the pulling in the stomach, the visualization of happiness) rather than fixating on the object of the desire (cookies!) separate the two things from each other - the wanting of the cookies and the cookies themselves. Opening up to the want is expansize and rich. Clinging to the object is constricting and painful.
This is another way I have been working with my longing. Rather than fixating on finding a partner, I connect to the wholesome energy of what I hope to cultivate in partnership, like care and communication. The same insight was true when I was looking for a job that felt aligned. Rather than focusing on a title or position, I tried to stay connected to the wish to find a role in which I could contribute my skills and grow.
Lastly, to get all cosmic about it: have you seen the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope? Among the many images that the telescope captured was data pointing toward signs of water on a planet orbiting a Sun-like star. I’m struck that behind our most advanced science, we humans are always exploring if the conditions for life exist elsewhere in the universe. We have a deep longing to not be alone (even though when we look at these images we are looking at ourselves). A conversation for another time - all my dharma might be about the James Webb Space Telescope from here on out. 🌌
xo Jessica
Inner Fields irl.
Inner Fields returns to in-person programming this August in New York! I hope you’ll join us for a communal potluck dinner in a private residence in Brooklyn (August 17) and a meditation at Garden of Hope (August 21). You can learn more information here.
Work with me.
You can find me weekly at Heal Haus, monthly at Inner Fields and five-days a week at Arena.
🌞