He desired me so I came close.
No one can ever near God unless He has prepared a bed for you.
A thousand souls hear his call every second,
but most every one then looks into their life’s mirror and says, “I am not worthy to leave this sadness.” When I first heard His courting song, I too looked at all I had done in my life and said,
“How can I gaze into His omnipresent eyes?” I spoke those words with all my heart,
but then He sang again, a song even sweeter,
and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence
God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth,
“I made you, dear, and all I make is perfect. Please come close, for I desire you.” -Saint Teresa of Avila
Do you hear the call of the Divine in your own life? What does it say? What does it feel like? What stops you from listening?
For me this spiritual longing has come in different forms. When I was a teenager, I wanted to intellectually understand the truth about life. I realized eventually that the mind cannot understand the truth, at least my mind can't. I realized that the heart was my most sacred center for knowing life, and that love was the highest truth.
Now all I want is love. Love, love, and more love. A love that encompasses all things, embraces darkness the same as the light. An indiscriminate ecstatic embrace of life. I have the urge to merge with that. I feel like my unspoken life's goal has turned into knowing and being love. There I said it!
Sometimes my longing comes with a lot of sadness; a sort of grief. It is a grief that just wants to be forever home in the love. It calls out for a home in divine love. I cry sometimes because of the deep longing, because within the longing is the love itself, and the beauty of this love moves me. I am amazed at how much love and beauty my heart contains. I feel the grief is also conveying that my soul longs to blossom more into its true form, within my unique embodied expression. It wants to so powerfully bloom and burst into life with unceasing joy.
I am just going to follow that love to where it leads me. I trust it because there is nothing I can find to be more meaningful in the world. I would like to encourage everyone to follow where their inner spiritual longing is guiding them, and to not doubt themselves. What could be more real and important? What else can you do when you realize that your outward material seeking is empty?
Maybe your longing calls to you through nature, music, or art. Perhaps your child's eyes. Perhaps your lover's eyes. Spiritual longing can be sexy, it can be pure and childlike, or sometimes driven like a warrior. It can be intellectual, heart-centered, curious, sad, grieving, peace-seeking, restless, or confused. I even think that suicidal impulse is actually just a deep desire to be free from suffering, to be at peace with one's Self again. We all just want to be thoroughly loved, soothed into perfect peace, and filled with joy. We all just want to go Home.
When my mouth touched His I became invisible,
the way the earth would if the sun took it into its arms.
The ecstatic death I know.
What can touch His exquisite form is not anything that can be seen.
How do we make love to God;
how does the soul make love to God?
How does the soul make love to God?
The heart has divine instincts;
It just needs to be turned loose in the sky.
Does not every angel know where He lives, and will beat on His door all night if it is locked. -St. Teresa of Avila
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