Connect with your longing
Follow me on a little imaginative journey…
You stand at the edge of a great forest. The forest floor and canopy are thick with vegetation and you can hear critters scurrying about inside the dense woods. The air smells of sweet evergreens and lush soil. You hear the wind gently rustling the branches somewhere deep inside.
You see a small, single-track trail before you, framed by two large boulders on either side of the trail. A threshold.
As you stand here at the edge of this thick and luscious forest, you can feel something in you that longs to enter. To know your place in it. To be immersed.
When the time is right, when that little tug behind your belly button says “now,” you cross the threshold and enter the deep woods. Your journey begins.
There is a longing inside each of us to become one with something bigger than ourselves. To be fully integrated, to know our place, to feel a part of some meaningful Whole.
Take a moment now to see if you can call upon this feeling within your self.
What do you notice? Where do you feel it in your body? What comes up with this longing?
For me, it feels like a tug behind my navel and swelling in my chest. It’s usually warm and feels really big, like if I were to breathe into it and expand in it, it would overflow right out of my body and into the universe.
I believe this longing is actually a form of universal intelligence. I believe it is Life itself, reaching out to connect with more Life. Sometimes I call it an evolutionary impulse, sometimes I call it Purpose. It goes by many names, this feeling inside of us that longs to be a meaningful part of a meaningful Whole. We will spend a lot of time in this blog unpacking this, but for now, know that it exists inside of you too. I dare say that it’s what brought you here, perhaps.
The kind of longing I am referring to is soulful, deep and wise. It guides you back home to your truest, most authentic self. It reminds you of what’s important to you. It holds your momentum for your growth.
It is not the trappings of the ego that show up as craving, lust, greed or envy, although those can be wonderful mirrors to show you what you long for in a deeper sense.
When we commune with our longing - when we make space for it to be known and felt - it can shed light on the intrinsic spaces where we feel the most alive. It can show us our values and what integrity means to us. It points to our most sacred form of activism, our highest activation of leadership, our most abundant creative expressions. It shows us our own Wholeness and the role we play in the ecology of Life.
Communing with the Divine
When we are soulfully connected to our longing, we are in direct relationship with the divine. It’s how we communicate with the same cosmic intelligence that has propelled the universe forward for billions of years, and it exists inside of you to call you into full participation with Life’s unfolding.
com·mune
verb
share one's intimate thoughts or feelings with (someone), especially on a spiritual level.
feel in close spiritual contact with.
Our longing is our umbilical chord that connects us back to Source.
There are times when this communion is felt organically and powerfully - while looking at a sunset, gazing into a lover’s eyes, or watching a baby wiggle its way around a new world.
And there are times when we have to cultivate a practice in order to connect with it. We make time, we create space, we alter our consciousness, we pray, we dance, we journal, we wander in the woods, we invoke. We say, “I’m here, I’m ready. Let’s talk.”
Behind the “doings” of creating ritual spaces where this communion happens, there is a state of being that acts as the tuning fork for our consciousness. I believe our longing is the root of that state of being.
It’s our longing to be a meaningful part of a meaningful Whole that prepares our body, mind, soul and spirit for an encounter with the divine. It makes our prayers earnest. It activates our cells to remember that they are stardust. It drops the illusions and pretenses of the ego and charges our heart with magnetism.
Longing says, “I’m ready to remember home,” and the Universe answers in kind.
Longing is how we remember our aliveness, and I believe that awakened aliveness is our birthright.
An invitation
We are just scratching the surface of this topic. Longing is something I have spent years apprenticing as I have dedicated my life to living and leading in alignment with Soul and helping others to do the same. Over time we will unpack this both philosophically and experientially together.
But for now, over the next week I invite you to notice your longing.
Where does your mind wander when it’s free to roam? Beneath the to-do lists and programmed stories and patterns.
What do you always come back to, over and over again?
What topics could you speak about late into the night without ever running out of things to say?
Where are you envious of others? What about that ignites your desire? What does that tell you about your longing?
Where do you find yourself grasping or clutching onto something or someone? Beneath the fear and scarcity, what are you really reaching for?
What problems in the world enrage you? And what values do these injustices reveal to you?
As you might have noticed, getting to the authentic roots of your longing requires quite a bit of shadow work. Rarely is the surface level thing the actual source of your soul’s desires. Be investigative. Challenge your initial thoughts and ask yourself, “what’s deeper than this?”
You’ll know you’ve hit the root of your longing when you feel a shift in your body. It’s different for everyone, but it’s usually noticeable. Perhaps you’ll feel a wave of heat or unexpected emotion.
When you notice it, pause for a moment to savor the sensations. The more you do this, the easier it will be to notice when your longing is activated, and the easier it will be to commune with the divine in this way.
Over the next several months, we are going to intentionally develop a relationship with our longing through the resources and practices I share in this blog.
Continue to notice how and where your longing appears, as these are the threads you are holding to weave your world together.
I’ll see you next week where I’ll share more about communing with divine, creating ritual spaces, and crossing thresholds into the world behind the world.
What’s next?
I created this blog with the intention of sharing the threads that weave my world together. The weekly thread share is where I can explore the resources, thoughts, worldviews and beliefs that structure my life’s work, and in turn share them with you in a meaningful way.
Truthfully, I have no strategy or overarching theme for how this will unfold. I wrote three different blogs this week, unsure which one would be the best to send to you.
And in order to practice what I preach, I got out of my head, into my body, and asked deeply: “What needs to be shared the most this week?” and then I wrote about longing.
Perhaps that will be my strategy. Each week will look and feel different, but they will all come from this deeper place of asking Soul what most longs to be expressed right now. I appreciate your trust in me as I build a practice around that.
I can say with certainty that the following topics will make their way into this blog when the time is right, so I wanted to provide a little insight into the road ahead:
The relationship between Soul, Spirit and Ego.
Ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness.
The World Tree/Three Worlds worldview.
Purpose; Reactive vs. Creative vs. Soul Purpose.
Leadership; Conscious Leadership; Embodied Leadership; Creative Leadership; Transformative Leadership, Integral Leadership.
Structure and function of the psyche; Jungian psychology.
Myth, metaphor, symbolism, archetypes.
Shadow work, the Underworld, the Dark Feminine, all things having to do with the mythical darkness.
Emotional alchemy.
Somatics and embodiment.
Ancient and modern soul-stirring tools: trance dancing, drumming, tarot, ceremony, wandering.
Nature as a mirror for Soul.
The story of the universe, Evolution’s Purpose.
Ceremony, sitting and holding sacred space, embodied integrity in facilitation.
And soooooo much more.
This is the beginning of a beautiful and wild ride together and I am so grateful you’re here with me.
As always, find me on socials and let me know what you think!
May this publication support all beings everywhere.
Soulful blessings,
Emily