Everything begins with longing. Many speak about it. Many write about it. Discourses are held on it. I’ve come to understand it as something far more important than we allow ourselves to believe.
It is not something that can be willed or worked toward.
This longing doesn’t ask to be chosen.
It arrives quietly and refuses to leave.
It is not something to be explained.
It arrives as a quiet pull, one that does not ask to be named.
That pull is not sentimental or transactional. It is not built on attachment, expectation, or return. It moves within according to its own course, like a river. It cannot be chased or willed.
When longing deepens, something else begins to take shape.
Devotion.
Reverence.
The edges of the self soften. The need to define loosens. What once felt held together by effort begins to open from within.
Like a rose, it opens with tenderness.
When what is held tightly is brought into the open, surrender transpires.
Surrender is not collapse.
Surrender is not defeat.
Surrender is refinement.
What no longer serves begins to fall away.
The need to manage outcomes.
The attachment to certainty.
The resistance to being changed.
What remains feels quieter. More spacious. Less effortful. More real.
Everything gathers inward. Life feels illuminated, not because it becomes easy, but because it is deeply felt. Words begin to fall short. And maybe that is the point. Some experiences are not meant to be explained; they are meant to be lived.
Here, nothing needs to be asked.
Striving quiets.
The urge to shape or force gives way.
What remains is listening.
Gentle.
Present.
