LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Meggan Watterson!

Not this, not that

Dear Lovelets,

I remember sitting at a brunch many years ago, back when I was in my late 20s, with some other people who were all around the same age. They were new friends —neighbors, really — in a community where I had only recently moved with my then-husband. Everyone at the table was relatively newly married, and some had new babies and new houses. And the conversation around the table was focused around those babies, those marriages, those houses.

I also had a new marriage and a new house, and I was at the age when I was supposed to be thinking about having a baby.

But all I was thinking about, during that brunch, was this question: “Does everyone else not feel like their heads are on fire?”

Everyone seemed so composed, so certain of their choices in life, so relaxed on their path. Were they not pacing the hallways of their houses, wondering what in the world they had just done by getting married? Did they not feel electric with dissatisfaction, angst, and doubt? Did they not feel like running away during the night, moving to another country, changing their names, lighting a match to their whole lives? Were they not aching with questions about God, about purpose, about EVERYTHING? Were they not crawling out of their skins with fear and desire?

I wonder what would have happened if I had simply asked any of those questions that day at the brunch — instead of just assuming there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and that everyone else was normal and satisfied.

“Hey guys? I know we just met and I’m new to town, but real quick: Does anyone else feel like their heads are on fire?”

The replies might have been very interesting. Because I have learned over the years that most people, in fact, do feel like their heads are on fire with questions, doubts, fears, and — of course — desire.

And so today, here in the safety of this community, I can finally ask:

Do any of you feel like your heads are on fire? Are you longing for something you can’t quite name? It’s okay to talk about it here. This is Letters From Love, where we gather every week to ask the Spirit of Unconditional Love/SOUL to tackle the most burning of subjects.

And the subject today, thanks to our special guest, the brilliant, thoughtful, heart-centered, feminist theologian Meggan Watterson, is LONGING. Let’s see what unconditional love has to say about that, shall we?

I cannot wait to read your letters!

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about longing?

Dearest Hungry Hungry Hippo of the Heart, we might start by saying that longing was your first language, your mother tongue, the country that you were born into, and your first memory.

And how beautiful it is. How beautiful and poignant it is to be born a person who longs, who reaches and wants for more, who dreams that there could be something or somebody coming, worth sacrificing everything for, something or somebody who will, once attained, make everything in here feel right.

Longing, for you, is something different and more holy than regular day-to-day wanting, or even the hot, obsessive flames of desire. Your friend the Buddha was correct when he said that desire was the source of all suffering — attachment and desire — but honey, sweetheart, listen: longing is sacred. Longing is the beginning of all adventure, and the doorway, ultimately, to wisdom and even peace. The Buddha himself kissed his son and wife goodbye and left the comforts of the palace because of his longing — the longing to understand the ways of the world, and to find an end, at last, to the dilemma of suffering.

Your longing brought you, little speckled egg, to us. Without your longing, you would have been content with whatever the world had to offer you, with whoever showed up, with whatever was on sale, with reality as it appeared. And none of that ever worked for you, did it? You always wanted more, different, something else.

Longing is a sacred ache, and what it drove you to do was to scour the world looking for relief from it, and to try everything the world had to offer — and you are such a good little huntress that you really went after it, didn’t you? You really tried to fulfill that longing with people, places, things, accomplishments, activities, and even with learning. Your longing was a magnet, a heat-seeking missile, a truffle hound, a detective, a searchlight. Tireless. Obsessive.

And so much of what you found was beautiful, even exquisite. But none of it lasted, did it? None of it quieted the deepest longing. Hell, none of it touched the deepest longing. Whatever you found, whatever you tasted, the longing remained intact. Pure. That longing woke up with you every morning, and laid down beside you every night. Your constant aching companion — saying, as the ancient saints in India said, “Neti, Neti.” Not this, not that.

Not this, not that.

Nothing satisfied.

Until you heard my voice, saying, “I’m right here. I love you. And I’m not going anywhere.”

The voice of unconditional love.

Has anything but that ever worked? We can answer that for you: no. No, nothing but that has ever worked. Nothing, for you, but a voice of love that is always accessible within you, as you, and to you, will ever work. And that is why, my love, you may now lay down the search.

Because your longing found, at last, its forever home — in this conversation. The thing it came to search for, the thing it was programmed to search for without ceasing, until at last, in the great stillness, there came the splendor of recognition. The soulmate you had always sought, the God you had always needed, the answer you had always craved was nothing more or less than unconditional love spoken in your own voice. From the inside to the outside, instead of the other way around.

And here is the great irony. Remember how, when longing ruled your kingdom, nothing satisfied you? Remember how I told you that without your longing, you would have just been somebody content with whatever the world had to offer you, with whoever showed up, with whatever was on sale, with reality as it appeared, and none of that had ever worked for you?

Well isn’t it interesting that now, now that your holy longing has finally been met and sated by equally holy undying, unconditional love . . . now suddenly EVERYTHING works for you? Now it all feels like a miracle. Everything is satisfying. Whatever the world has to offer you, whoever shows up, whatever is on sale, reality exactly as it appears is enough. More than enough. Abundant! All of it is just fine now. More than just fine. Perfect.

Instead of Neti, Neti — not this, not that — you just feel a giant resounding YES to it all. Yes to this! Yes to that! Every person, place, or thing illumined now by the same radiance, everything equally and perfectly sacred. You can just as easily travel to the furthest ends of the world or stay home staring at a wall in New Jersey, and all of it is equally sanctified, equally satisfying. And all you have to remember to keep it alive with sacredness is our divine, infinite contract: “I’m right here. I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Thank your longing, my darling child. You may thank it for not resting until it got you what you needed the whole time. You may thank it for bringing you to us. Sacred messenger. Thank it, and now let it rest in gentle surrender.

We’re right here. We love you. We aren’t going anywhere.

Prompt

It still surprises us at LFL headquarters that more than two years after this project began, the questions that arise in our guest letters still touch so consistently on universal experiences. Who among us has not longed for some thing, person, feeling, place, experience? This week, let’s tap into a place of unconditional love and ask this question: What would you have me know about longing?