We long...
Last night Semira joon and I went for a walk and coffee run together. She had been away for a couple of weeks and we were catching up/revelling in being in each other’s presence again. (We really like each other:-)) As we were walking, we started talking about this interesting passage in the Bahá’í writings (I cannot, at the moment, recollect the exact source of the quote) which explains that the human heart has the condition of longing. In other words, the human heart was made to love, and has the quality of longing for that which it should love. This quality is inherent in every human heart (as I understand it), not just the “purehearted.” But, here’s the catch. The human heart was made to love God. Should constantly long for God. For His attributes. The human heart should long for Truth, for Justice, for Love, for Compassion—for the attributes of God, and for God Himself, though He may be, in His essence, unknowable to us. And we talked about how if our heart doesn’t long for God, this quality doesn’t become dormant, it is simply channeled in a different direction.
So instead the heart begins to long for another human being. Or for things. For fast cars or pretty dresses or vacation homes. It longs for feeling. So many turn to drugs, to alcohol, to anything which will help them feel something. Remind them they’re alive. Some people even begin to long for violence, for pain in others. Because it still fills them with a rush, a feeling of being alive.
Semira and I talked about different points in our lives when we’d been really desirous of something and it hadn’t come through—how that made us feel. I told her about how my sophomore year in college I wasn’t really praying as often as I should/could and wasn’t in the most spiritual frame of mind. My heart was full of longing for a relationship with God that I wasn’t actually putting much effort into building. So instead that longing centered on something else. And when that thing didn’t come through, I sank into a short, but painful, depression. It took me months to realize how foolishly and wastefully I was behaving. It took me years to realize why I reacted the way I did.
We both agreed that the times in our lives when we'd been focused on service, had been praying consistently and purposefully trying to develop a relationship with Him, it was so much easier to be unperturbed by things that didn't go "our" way. To accept that our way was probably not best for us, anyway.
Maybe the more we fill our hearts with His love, the less room we leave for love of the world and its fleeting components- be it things or even people.
So instead the heart begins to long for another human being. Or for things. For fast cars or pretty dresses or vacation homes. It longs for feeling. So many turn to drugs, to alcohol, to anything which will help them feel something. Remind them they’re alive. Some people even begin to long for violence, for pain in others. Because it still fills them with a rush, a feeling of being alive.
Semira and I talked about different points in our lives when we’d been really desirous of something and it hadn’t come through—how that made us feel. I told her about how my sophomore year in college I wasn’t really praying as often as I should/could and wasn’t in the most spiritual frame of mind. My heart was full of longing for a relationship with God that I wasn’t actually putting much effort into building. So instead that longing centered on something else. And when that thing didn’t come through, I sank into a short, but painful, depression. It took me months to realize how foolishly and wastefully I was behaving. It took me years to realize why I reacted the way I did.
We both agreed that the times in our lives when we'd been focused on service, had been praying consistently and purposefully trying to develop a relationship with Him, it was so much easier to be unperturbed by things that didn't go "our" way. To accept that our way was probably not best for us, anyway.
Maybe the more we fill our hearts with His love, the less room we leave for love of the world and its fleeting components- be it things or even people.
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