Longing

More from Parmenides - this time on longing.

"It (the moon) wanders about the earth, shining at night with borrowed light. She is always gazing earnestly toward the rays of the sun."

Then there is this from Peter and Maria Kingsley from "As Far As Longing Can Reach" from the summer 2006 edition of Parabola.

"There is no reasoning with passion and longing, although we like to deceive ourselves by believing there is. All we ever do is reason with ourselves about the form our longing will take. We reason that if we find a better job we will be content, but we never are. We reasons that if we go somewhere special we will be happy; but when we get there we start wanting to go somewhere else. we reason that if we were to sleep with the lover of our dreams we would be fulfilled. And yet even if we were to manage that, it would still not be enough.

What we sometimes refer to, so misleadingly, as "human nature" is simply the state of being pulled by the nose in a hundered different directions and ending up going nowhere very fast.

But although there is no reasoning with our passion, it has a tremendous intelligence of its own. The only trouble is that we keep interfering; keep breaking it up into tiny pieces, scattering it everywhere. Our minds always trick us into focusing on the little things we think we want - rather than on the energy of wanting itself.

If we can bear to face our longing instead of finding endless ways to keep satisfying it and trying to escape it, it begins to show us a glimpse of what lies behind the scense of this world we think we live in. It opens up a devastating perspective where everything is turned on its head: where fulfillment becomes a limitation, accomplishment turns into a trap. And it does this with an intensity that scrambles our thoughts and forces us straight into the present.

Longing is the movement and the calling of our deepest nature. It's the cry of the wolf, the power of the lion, the fluttering of all the birds inside us. And if we can find the courage to face it, it will take us back to where we belong."