From a Dear Reader:
I long/have resistance to moving to a beautiful, supportive but rustic Hermitage that’s run by nuns. I’ve been debating this for over a year now, and still never get a clear answer. Sometimes my heart pulls me so strongly I feel like I could almost teleport. But I visited for two weeks last year and couldn’t wait to leave, so I also have to listen to that. At times, each is equally strong.
I have found both the place of happiness and yearning in my heart, and then also the place of what didn’t work, that feeling in the pit of the stomach. I have a real connection with one nun, and I yearn to be able to take some of the responsibilities from her. There are many reasons this should work, but it’s a big step to take if I’m not sure.
When I visited last year it just wasn’t what I’d expected. It was cold, there was no outhouse near my cabin, there was a lot of hiking that my out-of-shape body didn’t like. It was a totally different energy than I’m used to and I wonder if I will be comfortable with it if I return?
I know you can’t decide for me, but perhaps you can help me determine how to decide between the feelings for or against. Thank you so much, if you have time to answer this.
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– I hug you in your earnest efforts – really to be enlightened. The good heart you bring to it. The fullness. The deep desire.
First, I want to deeply express the awareness that you know deep in your bones what is right for you. Anything and everything I say is only to support or incite or bring to surface awareness of that Wisdom you contain on your own behalf. It is the best that can happen.
I hear, first: your longing to move to the rustic Hermitage. The heart pull. The yearning both to be there in the beauty, and to help with their work. And, the resistance to the same. The idea you have of the place is/was different than the reality you encountered. A community you weren’t expecting and with which you were not comfortable. The cold. The environment being less hospitable than it was in your imaginings.
I don’t know what is right for you. But, I do know that – for me – I stay most on track when I tell myself the truth of my experience as I’m having it. When the yearnings I feel have a component of imagining: “I would”, “It would” – meaning – a projected likelihood for something that in my mind’s eye would fulfill the yearning, I can go astray. Not because the yearning is off. But because the imagined solution may or may not be what I imagine it to be.
So, the seduction becomes either:
- To believe that which our mind has created will solve our longing
- Or give up on our longing, believing since our ideas keep leading us into disappointment, the longing itself must be at fault.
There is another way. To surrender into the experience of the moment means to also accept ourselves deeply and fully in our experience. In OUR experience – the reality we are personally, ourselves experiencing. This includes our yearnings. Our longings. It also includes the experience we are having when we are actually IN the situation we imagined would be “the solution” to that yearning.
Don’t shy away from these experiences too soon. Surrender more deeply INTO it. From the depth of the yearning cry out. There is a Divine who hears us. Of this I have become sure. When we live so deeply in our raw authenticity, the Universe DOES respond. It is only those voices in the head that decry the very essence of our heart’s yearnings that get in the way. Those voices that try to wrestle us into some sort of logical progression along the Spiritual Path. Spirituality of the Heart is more messy than that. It comes up in spews of Truth. Unasked for, in response to what is in front of us. To do. To respond to. To listen to. To answer.
So – listen to your heart in the middle of any experience you are having. That means, when sitting alone at home, feel deeply the raw edges of loneliness or yearning or whatever it is for you. And ask for that to be healed. To be filled. And wait. Wait. Turn towards yourself with full love. Full compassion. Full longing for the easing of this suffering. Full acceptance. Full acceptance.
That for which you have been longing fills you up in that waiting. It comes unbidden to those who are still long enough for it to get in through the cracks in the door. And then, when your body feels the impulse to move to the next thing, do so fully.
Wherever you are, there will be that which arises. When in the cold damp of the Hermitage, sit with the discomfort. We are led to that which is the appropriate response from being completely in the experience. And, sometimes that is a simple solution. A warm blanket. Or – a move to a warmer clime, because – really – this is what we need. Sort of like – hunger’s simple solution is to eat.
But, sometimes the solution is of a deeper sort. And the yearning of the Heart is of that deeper sort.
So, sit still longer with the yearning. NOT to make it go away. But, surrender to its pull. Welcome it. Invite it. Thank it for where it will lead you. And what it will lead to you – into your life, by its magnetic pull. It happens.
What begins to happen then is synchronicity. Of the sort that brings in more tangible effects of this. But, it doesn’t work to seek the tangible first. It just doesn’t. Because – it isn’t the tangible that is the answer to our yearning. Not ever. The tangible is just the wrapper the Universe devises to dress it up. Never get confused about this. The wrapper is not the gift. Carbon based forms fall away. The living, vibrant Center of Life – which we are – and which we yearn to touch, savor and know – this lives forever.
It is us. It is what we are looking for.
There is also this technique of boring down into the simplicities. Noticing. The yearning specifically for what? Peace. Serenity. Community. Loving the connection with a specific person. And move/act on those specific elements; without getting attached to a specific environment in which we think it will all be. Let the Universe step in more deeply. Most of all –notice that edge where you don’t trust that. That thought-place – that mistrust/distrust – is a mental conglomerate. A block. A solid spot that we all trip over when it comes in. And – usually – it’s that one big, deep area where we long the most. Where we fear the most. Where we most wish it would work out. That’s where the lack of trust trips us up. “Everywhere but HERE”, we think. “These principles work everywhere but here. This one is too big.”
It isn’t. It isn’t too big. This is the rock in front of the cave of enlightenment. That place where we argue that this – “THIS is where we can’t trust God. THIS is too big. HERE – we need to take over to figure it out.” We think we know this because of the immensity of our disappointment with what the Universe has given us in this particular region/issue/place.
Here – here is where the healing has to happen. And the healing always involves surrendering more deeply to the Life that is really in charge. It almost always includes forgiveness. Of every part of our life where that didn’t work out (how the longing got there). Of every person involved. And, most of all – of ourselves.
So much love to you – you are Blessed. You are a seeker of the Highest we can achieve in this lifetime --- the awareness of Life, Itself. Your Heart is Golden ~
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