09 Jul Life Means Longing
The following quote is from the Spirit of Sufi Culture, Akbat Ashram Tract No 12 by AH Jaisinghani. It’s a tuning fork for our soul, urging us to cultivate our longing so that we can find our way home, home to our heart and our soul. May the words open your heart to long for who you are. May the words provide guidance as you find your way home.
Life means Longing.
Progress is only possible through Longing. And as the Path of Progress is infinite, there should be infinite Longing.
Thus Longing becomes itself a form of the Infinite, to be desired for
its own sake.This is why the Mystics idealize Longing. The other name for
Longing is Love.Longing is to the Soul what water is to the soil Even as the
earth needs water to soften its particles, so that seed may sprout, the human Soul needs sorrow to make it fertile.Without longing, without sorrow, softening your Soul, there can be no
progress, no germination of the seed.That is the law of the spiritual life as of the physical.
And, therefore, while yet a Soul strives, while yet he is imperfect and subject to temptation, as every one of us is in this life, he must have longing and sorrow, which arise from the memory of the Beloved, to guard him from the danger of self-complacency and lead him safely to the Goal.
Longing not only supplies an incentive to life, but it makes you mild and humble. And humility is a very necessary factor of spiritual life. It is but a child of Longing. Both live together.
Humility and Longing imply imperfection. And the uncertainty of perfection in human life is what makes Longing and Humility necessary for a spiritual aspirant.
–from the Spirit of Sufi
Culture, Akbat Ashram Tract No 12September 31 by AH
Jaisinghani