The Yearning

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The Mystic's Life Lesson #9A Discourse On
The Yearning
Late one night you may find yourself saying:
"But I don't care about the alleged benefits of higher consciousness. And, I'm not interested in forming
new tendencies or discovering greater talents. I need help for the agony in my heart! I seem to be suffering
from life itself, from the limitations of mortality. I'm not interested in being more conscious or less
conscious. My problem is this gnawing in my gut, my deep sense of incompleteness. Even when I achieve
what others call meaningful, I feel empty. Even when I'm a hero it seems meaningless.
"All the activities of life seem merely expedient only a shadow play without substance. I am suffering
within my skin, within the hollows of my skull. I yearn to live with purpose, yet my eyes are too coated to
perceive worthwhile purposes in the 'get up/go to work/come home/eat/watch television/go to bed
humdrum.' I ask others why they are doing what they are doing. After they say they are making a living or
starting their kids through the same ultimate process, I ask them again. Then they say they don't
know!
"I feel like Paul who said, 'Things I want to do, I don't do; things I don't want to do, I do.' I look at all of us
pushing through life and ask why. Is the main purpose of existence only to maintain existence? Birth,
copulation, death is that it? Really?
"Sometimes I can preoccupy myself and drown out the yearning for a few days. Then it comes back.
What's wrong with me that I can't be happy with the humdrum until I'm sixty-five? Why can't I look
forward to retirement and the doctors escorting me to my hopefully penultimate tomb? Above all, either
satisfy my yearning, pacify this aching heart and perplexed mind or take away, please take away, this
yearning. I yearn to be better than I am. I crave that life have more value."
A Quest For Meaning
Do you have these feelings? Have you ever felt this way? If this yearning were to continue unabated,
without being satisfied, it could be dangerous. Without finding satisfaction you will likely develop
impaired functioning and diminished ability to relate to other people. In your neurosis, reality can become
obscured and who knows what illnesses might develop after that.

Yet this perplexity is a common experience to most people who ultimately realize the
higher consciousness. These people are not merely intrigued by the benefits of higher consciousness.
They are desperate people, driven to a quest for meaning. They are haunted by the hope of deep and total
satisfaction in the realization of their underlying humanity and spirituality. These seekers crave sight of
the polestar that will guide them to values they can wholeheartedly live for and enthusiastically
accomplish.
Feeling Estranged
Being desperate, they're somewhat menacing to the happiness of others. Their lack of satisfying fulfillment
in the regular things of life hurts loved ones and friends who are quite content with the way life is going.
These driven ones seem to sneer at society.
"They must be snobs the way they're unable to share in the common joys of life," parents and old friends
say. "Their discontent can make them pessimists for life! They're ignoring excellent career opportunities!
These strange ones say so emotionally that they're not alive merely to exist. Well, who is? They must be
missing crucial brain circuits! And being nice to them doesn't help. Being nasty merely adds to their
apparent martyrdom for the ridiculous. Worse, they might turn to dope or alcohol. They seem to be life's
fugitives." Beneath these remarks is the judgment that the discontented are too self-indulgent in their
dissatisfactions; they are apparently too lazy or too weak to get on with their lives and fulfill their roles in
family and society.
Former friends wonder, "They talk about their yearnings and their need to understand life. This yearning
looks more like an excuse for eccentricity and a rationale for putting other people down. Yearnings? We all
have yearnings. Why do they act so exclusive?"
Enter The Freeway
Yet, in life we all have a choice. The path of higher consciousness is much like a freeway. People turn onto
this royal road from the most adjacent community of thought. They also turn off this road when some
activity or community beside the road looks more appealing and interesting than the pleasure of
continuing toward an as yet unknown reality.
Many people turn onto the road of higher consciousness when they reach a personal state of deep
yearning. They do not much care about the benefits enumerated and exclaimed over in earlier Lessons.
They do not have to make an effort to be more conscious. They already crave greater consciousness. They
enter the freeway at this point exclusively because of their yearning. They need they deeply need to
find higher consciousness. Nothing they know, nothing they have found out so far, either from respected
teachers or from their own musings, has soothed their pain. They have been ejected from routine

satisfactions, as well as from the community of thoughts in their own minds. They have to find a love that
lasts and satisfies. They have cried quietly for many a night to know the how and why of life. They want to
find a place where they will fit in. Somewhere.
The Sincerely Confused
So it is that the freeway, which was once traveled mainly by those seeking fuller awareness of their
potential, is today newly populated by the sincerely confused. If you are one who seeks fuller awareness of
your potential, the newly arrived "sincerely confused" travelers will look at you and wonder what you are
doing on the road. They will question your motives, and you, if you are one of the comfortable, unagonized
seekers of higher consciousness, may feel: a) superior to these neurotic people, or b) inferior and not
worthy to be traveling with them. While you, after all, are planning simply to apply some effort toward a
number of specific benefits, these new travelers seem ready to give their all everything. But at times
they act as if the benefits you hope for are merely self-gratifying items on an egoic shopping trip.
The new entrants on the freeway, the sincerely confused, should be appreciated and accepted as fellow
human beings. One day you may become similarly motivated, if you're not already. You may, at some stage
on your pleasant journey, suddenly convulse in the realization that you are not the person you yearn to be.
You may sense there are much more important issues in your life than you have been willing to face
before. A sudden, intense dissatisfaction with your character flaws may grip you and not let go. On the
other hand, if you, by some special grace, are somehow enabled to value and appreciate the goodness
and beauty which underlies life, you may never have to know the agony of yearning. You may not need the
power of its motivation. You may do extremely well without yearning because of your eagerness to grow,
coupled with your honesty and a sense of good will for all, whatever their nature. 1
Youre A Traveler
In your eagerness to grow, along with your freedom from "the yearning disease," you will be a bright light,
a cheery face, and a harmonious influence in the lives of the dissatisfied. As they move forward, confused
about their goals, accepting new possibilities only to reject them, and then sometimes rushing back to seek
once again the rejected goal, you will be, in your steadiness, a fine inspiration.
If you find yourself on this freeway toward higher consciousness and you recognize you are a traveler due
to your yearning, dissatisfaction, confusion, or perplexity welcome! Many have come this way before
you and have succeeded. If you yearn to know what's worth doing, your question is not regarded as
nihilistic by your fellow travelers. Come along. In the meantime, don't stop taking an active part in life,
whether or not it makes sense to you. Do! Be about. Be active and perform the work that comes most
easily to your hand. Retain your ability to do. Retain your skill in action. Your present abilities will become
very, very useful when you find your higher consciousness.

If you view the world and your peers as being very confused, surely you can feel deep compassion for
them. Surely you would not condemn them but lend a helping hand, would you not? There is always
something you can do. Even if it seems insignificant to your state of mind, there are many ways you can
contribute something.
"Do you feel you are confused about yourself, that you do not even know who you are? Great philosophers
had the same problem Mahatma Gandhi and Benjamin Franklin, for example. Gandhi studied his life
and himself with painstaking honesty for years and years. Franklin, the genius who helped draft the
Declaration of Independence, was mainly self-taught. On his own he worked through mathematics
manuals, scientific journals, foreign languages, and daily exercises in character development. From youth
through advanced old age, Franklin's life was a quest for Truth. What made Gandhi, Franklin, and dozens
of others great was they did everything they could to resolve their yearnings and satisfy their
questions.
The Despair
Whether you're an eager traveler seeking the benefits of higher consciousness, or a driven traveler
desperate for satisfaction and meaning, you're traveling in the same direction. You're sharing the same
freeway and most of the events along the way.
While this road to higher consciousness is the road of highest joy, and while a sense of well being and
greater wisdom develops quite regularly, you should be warned that there will likely be times of despair.
When you travel this road, loved ones and business acquaintances may wonder why. The goal seems so
shining and clear to you, yet others who know you cannot sense or perceive your goal at all. They may feel,
and express themselves quite emotionally, that you're wasting your time or your resources. They may say
you're wasting your time becoming a nothing when you could become someone great. "Superstition,
abstraction, unreality," they say.
Friends may accuse you of striving to escape from the facts of life, or from the fun of life if your choices for
growth are in conflict with their ways of celebrating life. If they can't see what you're doing and in no way
comprehend what you're striving to do, and if they think the deprecatory words they're saying are for your
good, you will have to incorporate your despair and their lack of understanding into your quest. Let the
obstructions of their unkindness become motivating forces which compel you to succeed. Your
compassion and love, along with the strength that you must develop, will be extremely valuable as you
enter higher consciousness. If you will be kind, or strong, or strive as best you can to love and serve those
who oppose you, you will become successful. Those who are against you today may one day consider you
great. They may deem it an honor to have known you way back when you glimpsed the reality of a higher
consciousness.

Feelings Of Separation
In periods of despair you will primarily sense the painful separation from others, especially those you care
about most. You will also feel at times, in your despair, separate from humanity. You will feel the way
humanity is going creates much concern in your heart but that you, in seeking higher consciousness, are
going in a different direction.
Your most painful despair comes when you feel divided within yourself. You feel that a higher purpose
within you is being blocked or cut off due to an inadequate, stubborn, and insensitive nature. You may, in
despair, bemoan your inadequacies and lament the seeming wall or chasm between you and where you
sense you ought to be.
"Multitudes have gone before you. They suffered these moments of despair too. They dried their eyes, got
up and went on, as you will. They became more determined in their despair and focused on the great
importance of their destination. In their despair their hearts became more universal and they became
keenly sensitive to the hearts and minds of other people. Your periods of despair, if not selfishly or
slavishly indulged in, can become moments of expanded compassion and of deep concern for the well
being of all people. You will find each tear helps to wash away the sense of separateness. Each tear affirms
life and your caring heart. Each tear, in this instance, makes your mind clearer and nobler.
Becoming Clearer
The indication that your despair is a genuine aspect of your quest for higher consciousness and not an
emotional illness will be: does your despair make your life fresher? As a consequence of your
compassionate despair you will find yourself becoming clearer and more loving in daily life. You will begin
to develop, even while suffering times of despair at night or during other private times, a more cheerful
and accepting attitude for the world and for others. Also, your despair will give you greater insight into
your own mind and heart. You will find greater patience with yourself. The quality of your despair, which
seems so deep and gloomy, will nevertheless lighten your life noticeably. You will find it a joy to be free of
tears stored so long in your heart. It becomes a sweet joy to have a despair borne of a concern for higher
values and greater possibilities for everyone.
If your despair does not develop compassionate qualities, then it is destructive and you would be very wise
to discuss it with a counselor who can help you work through it, and get back on the road to higher
consciousness.
Your periods of despair on your path to higher consciousness affirm life. They also affirm your value and
your uniqueness as a precious human being. So, even despair has grand dimensions. The goal, however, is
to pass through your periods of despair and go forward as quickly as possible. The journey is much too

beautiful to be blotted out by watery eyes and otherwise occupied hearts.

REFLECTION

1 For all, that is, except bullies who strive to force their will and views on others and who must at times
be regarded with strength as well as compassion.
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