Now I’m stopped in my tracks and the longing for liberation arises. (1)
What is that longing? It’s a built-in, subsensible thirst that only God can fill. It’s a homing device, designed into us, that keeps us moving from God to God, to journey’s end.
The purpose of life is that God, through us, can experience Itself in our moments of Self-realization. God is formless and everything that is.
That which is formless and everything that is cannot assume an observer stance upon itself. It cannot be the subject of experiencing itself. It cannot be the object of that experience.
So It created finger puppets and clothed them in illusion. The moment they penetrate that illusion and realize the Truth, God meets God.
The longing for liberation keeps us searching, hungering, thirsting for God, until we find It. We try to fill the aching void we feel with cars, yachts, trips, dresses, children, anything we can throw at it. And yet the ache persists. Only the experience of God can fill it.
And when I stop madly cramming things down my throat, filling my apartment with possessions and tramping here and there, oohing and aahing, the ache returns.
It is known to ancients and contemporaries alike, Sirians as well as Earthlings.
Pseudo-Dionysius called it “a strong and sure desire for the clear and impassible contemplation of the transcendent. It is a hunger for an unending, conceptual, and true communion with the spotless and sublime light, of clear and splendid beauty.” (2)
Of it, SaLuSa said: “Within you is an innate urge to continue progressing with your spiritual evolution. Energy never stands still and is re-shaping and re-forming, until it reaches that point within the Source where it is in the ultimate state of perfection.” (3)
“Spiritual growth or development is your reason for being human, and the intent, the will to move in that direction has always been anchored deep within you. It was placed there by God when you chose to make and experience your illusory, separated reality of pain, suffering, and fear, so that you could never be truly lost.
“What you have been seeking for eons is already within you, as saints and mystics have been telling you. Finally, humanity is beginning to hear, and it is this that is bringing you joy. (4)
Adyashanti knows it:
“The impulse to be free is an evolutionary spark within consciousness which originates beyond the ego. It is an impulse toward the divine, unity, and wholeness. It is an impulse originating from the Truth itself.” (5)
And now, having let go of the reins, having stopped my mad mind from wandering, it blazes up in me,
It’s an itch I can’t scratch, a craving I can’t fill, which can only be endured, surrendered to, and allowed to work its will. It can’t be denied and yet it can’t be mitigated. When it asserts itself, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers, no longer rivers.
When it has achieved its ultimate aim and end, mountains will again be mountains and rivers, rivers.
Footnotes
(1) For more on the longing for liberation, see “The Urge to Evolve” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/fc/life1.html#urge1; “The Longing for Liberation” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment/ch-7-the-longing-for-liberation/; “The Longing for Liberation,” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/fdl/l1.html#longing1, and sections following; and “God Has Implanted in Our Hearts a Desire to Progress, a Longing for Liberation, or a Yearning for Union with Him,” at
https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/nmh/reincarn1.html#implant.
(2) Cohn Luibheid, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus, His Complete Works. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989., 151.
(3) SaLusa, March 31, 2010, at https://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/Channeled_Messages_by_Mike_Quinsey.htm.
(4) Saul, July 14, 2009, at https://johnsmallman.wordpress.com.
(5) Adyashanti, The Impact of Awkenening. Los Gatos: Open Gate Publishing, 2000, 3.