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by John Welwood

  But think about it for a moment. What would it really be like to live with someone who is everything, your only source of sunshine, the whole foundation of your existence? You would find yourself in the position of Majnun, the lover in a famous Sufi tale who literally goes mad for his beloved Layla, crying out, “I follow obediently my beloved, who owns my soul.” In modern terms, that would be a sign of disempowerment, codependence, emotional fusion, and addiction. In giving Layla his soul, Majnun has lost connection with his own vital center.

  Yet I must admit that even though I understand this rationally, there is also a place in me that resonates with and responds powerfully to the grand sentiments in these love songs. And I’ve always loved the tale of Layla and Majnun and others like it. Does this mean I’m just a hopeless romantic, addicted to the dream of the ideal lover who will bring perfect fulfillment and soothe all my cares away? Or is there some deeper, underlying truth contained in sentiments like “you are everything and everything is you”?

  Recently I looked over all the love poems I’d written to different women in my life, collected over the course of thirty-five years. Even though these women are all quite distinct in my mind, each possessing her own particular beauty and woundedness, I noticed that the passion and longing in each of these poems seemed to be addressed to one and the same special you.

  One poem, using the metaphor of a dry landscape whose creek beds swell with the first rains of the season, ends with the line, “All my streams run to you.” Even now it’s not hard for me to resonate with the feeling in that line, that sweet surrender of the gravitational pull that you—the special you, whose luminous presence inspires awe and wonder—exert on me.

  Yet what exactly is this magnetic pull? If I imagine that the other person possesses some special power or magic that I am missing and must have at any cost, then addiction takes over, as I obsess over what this “good other” can bestow on me. But if instead I look at what is happening inside me, I recognize the influence of the beloved as something like that of an exquisite passage of music, as it draws me into a fresh, unknown space where I taste a certain depth of soul. On being moved by a sublime passage from Beethoven, I might conclude that I should listen to Beethoven every day. But it’s not really about Beethoven. Yes, Beethoven is magnificent, as is the one I love, but the real power and magic lie in what is stirred within me.

  Passion and longing, then, are my responses to the sacred you—which could take the form of a lover, a mountain at dusk, or the Moonlight Sonata—you who allow me to enter into the mystery of my own being. As expressed in a poem I once wrote after a painful heartbreak:

  Who is this you I want?

  You is just a name tag—

  For greater being which is all around,

  And inside too.

  This is what Rumi means when he declares, “The one I love is everywhere.” The you I love is everywhere: in the snow-flakes falling, in the eyes that reveal my beloved’s inner light, or in the lovely wave of passion welling up from within the vital center.

  Thus the sentiment in romantic pop songs grows from the same root as that of the great devotional poetry in the spiritual traditions. In traditional religious terms, it is the soul’s longing for God. After all, it is only to God, or the mysterious source of all, that we can truly sing, “you are everything and everything is you.” It is only to absolute love that we can rightfully declare, “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” and “I can’t live if living is without you.” Our longing for the source of love is as natural as a deer’s thirst for water. Or in the lovely phrasing of the Psalmbook: “Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O Lord.”

  Many great mystics and sages have found that the thirst for God is most fully satisfied through drinking from the wellspring of spirit that flows within our very core. Some spiritual traditions, such as Sufism, see longing as a direct tap-line into absolute love because it provides that inner moistening. When the great Sufi mystic Ibn al-‘Arabī exclaims, “O Lord, nourish me not with love, but with the longing for love,” he is recognizing that longing deeply felt is nourishing in itself. For it rouses the heart, directly awakening us to what is most alive within us.

  In this same vein Rumi sings:

  Hear the dog as it cries for its master:

  That crying is the connection.

  Rumi is telling us that the longing that wells up from deep within is not just a need for external gratification, but a direct link to our “master”—the great richness hidden within us, which the Tibetans call the wish-fulfilling gem. In the words of the Indian teacher Nisargadatta,26 “Desire is devotion . . . to the real, to the infinite, the eternal heart of being.” And therefore, “it is not desire that is wrong, but [only] its narrowness and smallness.” Interestingly, the Tibetan term for devotion is composed of two words combined: longing and humbleness. Longing is like the arrow of a compass magnetically directing us to the source of love, while humbleness is the openness that invites love to come streaming in.

  Infinite Passion

  One of the most frustrating things about relationships is that we always seem to want more from them than they offer. Even if you do manage to win the object of your desire, you are never entirely satisfied with him or her, isn’t this so? You would like your beloved to be more beautiful, more sexy, more attuned, more attentive, more responsive, more . . . “Well, maybe this isn’t the right person after all,” you may eventually conclude. Yet even when we finally decide that someone is the right person, he or she still never seems totally right in every way.

  It’s curious and amusing, isn’t it? You feel attracted to someone, you woo and pursue, you win this person over, you make love, and maybe you finally marry. But somehow none of that puts an end to your longing. Your passion still wants something more. So then you may try having kids—maybe that’s the fulfillment that will satisfy your yearning. Or you try to perform a makeover on your partner, so that he or she will finally do it for you. But that creates more problems, so then you might try couples therapy or take up workshops on Tantric sex. Yet no matter how much things may improve, your longing for something more never entirely disappears.

  But this is not a problem! It’s not a sign that something is wrong with you for wanting more or with your beloved for failing to satisfy all your desires. We can only make peace with the endlessness of our passion through recognizing the true object of our desire.

  Desire focused on a person can never be totally satisfied. That’s because the one we love stirs our passion for something that lies beyond this finite person. Kierkegaard called this “infinite passion,” or “passion for the infinite.”

  Other animals, being totally rooted in the finite, are satisfied with immediate gratification of basic needs. But since human consciousness has roots in the infinite, we can discover in the beauty of finite things a much larger beauty shining through them. Our longing for more arises from what is infinite within us,27 and it aims for the infinite—boundless openness and love. It’s never just this woman that I love. It’s also the way she suggests and reveals a larger beauty beyond herself, sparking an expansive opening in me that lets me touch the beauty right here within myself. No theory of human love can ever be complete without this understanding.

  Your longing is holy because it wants to link you up with the infinite source of all, as it lives within you. That is why, if you can open yourself to the energy of longing itself, it will take you beyond gross craving and attachment. Through your longing—the feeling that you cannot live if living is without true love—you turn toward love at its living source.

  At bottom, you want yourself. Not a shrunken, superficial version of yourself but what is most real and alive in you. You want to feel your own juice, the elixir of great love flowing in your veins.

  Of course, we often imagine that a new and more beautiful lover is what will give us this juice. That’s understandable, especially if we feel turned on and juicy in someone’s p
resence, or even just thinking about him or her. That’s fine. There’s no problem with the poetry of “you are my sunshine.” It’s delightful to write passionate poems to one’s beloved, the sacred Thou, and to feel turned on by the play of sensuality.

  But if we don’t want to become enslaved, burned out, let down, or disenchanted, we must not become too serious about all of this. We need to bring greater awareness to our passion. This means realizing that the perfect lover of our dreams—the one who could lead us into a space of endless beauty and delight—can only be found, in truth, when we surrender to the very heart of life, the open expanse of being, hidden within this and every moment. Recognizing this will help free us from addiction to any person or relationship. Conscious passion means owning our desire-energy as our own living juice, and learning to ride on this wave of radiant aliveness.

  The Indian teacher Sri Poonja28 once said wisely, “The desire for freedom arises from freedom itself.” The desire he is speaking of here is holy longing—the deep wish to connect with the essence of what you are. Indeed, you can want only what you’ve already had some taste of. You can’t want an orange unless you know what an orange tastes like. And you can only yearn for freedom when you know what freedom feels like.

  In the same way, we long for perfect love only because we’ve already had a taste of it. And since we haven’t located it in the external world, our knowledge of perfect love can only have come from deep within ourselves. The longing for perfect love arises from perfect love itself, which dwells within the human heart.

  It’s as though we have a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses locked up inside us, hidden away in the depths of our being. There is the god of love, the goddess of beauty, the god of truth, the goddess of wisdom. If we listen intently, we can just barely hear them calling to us. They want to join with us and offer us everything, but we have been facing away from them for so long that it is hard to hear or recognize their faint cries. Yet their call can still be heard in the voice of our longing.

  Seeking perfect love from imperfect relationships leaves us frustrated because it leads in the wrong direction. Since the desire for perfect love comes from perfect love itself, we need only follow the golden thread of our longing back to its source. In opening to the energy of passion and longing, we make ourselves receptive to a visit from the gods.

  Opening to Receive

  To sum this up in practical terms: Start simply, right from your longing to feel loved or your desire for something more from some relationship in your life. Maybe you want your partner to really understand you. Maybe you want to have someone come along and notice your beauty or see who you are. Maybe you want to feel more connected with someone. Maybe you long for happiness, ease, and well-being. Maybe you want better sex. Start from there.

  Then gradually turn your attention from what you want toward the desire or need itself. What does your desire actually feel like as a living experience in your body? At first it may take a little effort and intention to turn your focus around like this. The key point is to feel the desire or longing itself, as it vibrates in your body. Maybe you have never paid much attention to this before. Pay particular attention to the vital center, in your belly, just below the navel. Take time to feel into it.

  As you feel into your longing for love and connection, notice what it puts you in touch with. Don’t think about this with your mind, but simply look at and feel what is there. You might feel some warmth or softening, some expansiveness or fullness, or a tingling sense of the body coming alive. One person in one of my workshops described it as “my heart bursting open more and more.”

  Sometimes there is a sweet sadness that comes with the longing as well. This is a soul sadness that grows out of recognizing how long we have felt separate and disconnected. It is a moisturizing sadness that softens the defensive shell around the heart, a purifying sadness that clears the ground for new life to spring up. It is an experience of grievance melting down into grief. Rumi calls this the “secret cup”29 because it makes us a vessel that is open to receiving:

  The grief you cry out from

  Draws you to union.

  Your pure sadness

  That wants help

  Is the secret cup.

  Whether or not it is accompanied by this soul sadness, opening directly to your longing makes you more pliable and receptive. As it brings you into your body, your vital center, and your heart, you may find that love is not all that far away. Perhaps it has already secretly entered the room.

  Love Wants You

  Opening to our longing unveils the subtlest of all forms of desire: prayer. Just as longing is a subtler form of desire than craving, so prayer is subtler still. It is a pure connecting with what is most real—the openness and warmth from which all blessings flow.

  The pure wish to be one with love is the eternal prayer that lives within the heart. This prayer also lies hidden within our desire for another person’s love. In wanting to be loved, we want the experience of love coming toward us. The truth is, the benevolence in this universe is always coming toward us and shining upon us, like the light of the sun. Countless people have discovered this through finding grace and blessings in the most difficult, even the most horrific circumstances. The key lies in letting love come toward us. This is what Rumi means when he says, “To find the beloved, you must become the beloved.” We become the beloved by opening up to let love in.

  In a small way, this is what happened to Julie when she let Rick see how much she wanted him. The grief she cried out from drew her to union. Without even knowing what she was doing, she let her longing come forward and be seen, and this invited love into the room. At that point neither Julie nor Rick had all that much choice in the matter.

  Julie did not decide to reveal herself. Instead, her usual defenses fell away, like a cloak sliding off her shoulders, allowing Rick to see her standing naked before him. Nor did Rick decide to respond as he did. He couldn’t help it. His heart was simply responding to the one he loved when she no longer turned her face away from him. The clouds parted and a ray of pure love shone through him choicelessly, at least for that moment.

  Holy longing is the secret cup that invites love to enter into us. In this sense, we could say that genuine receiving can be an even more sacred act than giving—because it requires humbling ourselves and melting open, giving up control, and making ourselves fully available to love as the great power that infuses us with life.

  When you become the secret cup, it’s not just you wanting love anymore. Instead, you find that love wants you. It has only been waiting for you to let it in. When you lay bare your holy longing, then, as Rumi counsels, “miraculous beings come running to help.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Love That Sets You Free

  Love is always loving you.

  —H. W. L. POONJA

  OUR BIRTHRIGHT as human beings is to have direct access to perfect love, and our privilege is to serve as a channel through which it flows. Realizing this, we can see the folly of trying to earn love through efforts, looks, or achievements. We might be able to win approval, praise, or rewards by these means, but not the love that embraces us as we are, the love that sets us free, the love that lights up this world. Rather than trying to win love, we need to let it fully enter into us.

  How can we let this happen, so that we can know we are loved absolutely, and know this with certainty, in our flesh and bones?

  Absolute Love, Here and Now

  I would like to present a simple yet powerful way to connect directly with the living presence of absolute love that is always available. I am not sure whether to call this a practice, an invocation, or a prayer. However you like to think of it, the essence of it is to tune in experientially to the immediate presence of love, through activating the longing that already exists within your heart, as discussed in the previous chapter. Please do not try to direct this process with your mind or concentrate too narrowly on the words that follow. It is best to do this at a ti
me when you can settle down and let your mind relax.

  This practice will help you open up the receiving channels in your body and start to experience the absolute love that is ever present. The suggestions that follow are simply guidelines that I have found helpful, both for myself and in working with others. You might try following them closely at first and then eventually adapt them in your own way.

  1. SETTLE INTO YOUR BODY.

  Take a few moments to sit quietly and settle down. You may prefer to lie down. Start by coming down out of your mind and inhabiting your body. You might take a few deep breaths and feel the sensations of aliveness in different parts of your body. Sense your vital center in the belly, three fingerwidths below your navel. This is where you can feel your connection with the earth most fully. Breathe into the belly and ground yourself there. Feel your heart center, in the middle of your chest. This is where you can feel your connection with your humanness most fully, with its tenderness, warmth, and compassion. Then sense the crown center, at the top and rear of your head. This is the heaven center, where you are oriented toward the infinite. Sense how these three centers line up in a vertical column of bodily presence.

  2. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR SEPARATION FROM LOVE.

  Then turn your attention toward some way in which you feel cut off or separate from love in your life right now, and let yourself acknowledge that. You might think of a specific person who doesn’t love you as much as you’d like, or a more general way in which you feel love missing. Then take a moment to see how the lack of love feels in your body. Perhaps it appears as an emptiness, a hole, a deadness, a loneliness, or a fear. Let yourself feel that directly. This is important because feeling the absence of love helps activate your longing for it. Stay close to the bodily felt experience as much as possible, without letting your mind manufacture a whole story about it.