The Fire of Separation - Mirabai Starr

There is a longing that burns at the root of spiritual practice.
This is the fire that fuels your journey.  The romantic suffering
you pretend to have grown out of, that remains coiled like a
serpent beneath the veneer of maturity.  You have studied the
sacred texts.  You know that separation from your divine source
is an illusion.  You subscribe to the philosophy that there is
nowhere to go and nothing to attain, because you are already
there and you already possess it.

But what about this yearning?  What about the way a poem by
by Rilke or Rumi breaks open your heart and triggers a sorrow
that could consume you if you gave in to it?  You're pretty sure
this is not a matter of mere psychology.  It has little to do with
unresolved issues of childhood abandonment, or codependent
tendencies to falsely place the source of your wholeness outside
yourself.  The longing is your recognition of the deepest
 truth that God is love and that this is all you want.  Every
 lesser desire melts when it comes near the flame.

You realized that not every one experiences this.  For some
people, the spiritual journey is not so dramatic.  It's less about
the overwhelming desire for union with some invisible Beloved
than it is about quietly waking up.  It's about developing
compassion, rather than suffering passion.  There are people who
never doubt that God is with them, and so there is nothing to long
for.

But there are those, like you, who have felt the Divine move like
an ocean inside them, and, incapable of sustaining an unbroken
relationship with that vastness, feel they have been banished to
the desert when the wave recedes.  There is a tribe of holy lovers,
who have tasted the glorious sweetness that lies on the other side
of yearning, when the boundaries of the separate self momentarily
melt into the One, before the cold wind of ordinary consciousness
blows through again, and restores your individuality.  You would
risk everything to rekindle that annihilating fire.  You would leave
your shoes at the door and run after the cosmic flute player, if only
you could hear that music one more time.

You would give up everything for one glimpse of the Beloved's
face.  You sneak into his chamber in the middle of the night and
say "Here I am. Ravish me."  But when you awake the next morning,
swooning, and alone, you realize you missed the entire encounter.
You throw your clay cup on the cobblestones and it shatters.  You
thought you would marry, bear babies, make a career in broadcasting.
You wander city streets during siesta hour and wonder where He is
sleeping.  Your longing and your satisfaction are reciprocal.
The moan of separation is the cry of union...

Mirabai Starr

Excerpt from: Longing for the Beloved
posted in Parabola
via - No Mind's Land