The following is an excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Longing for the Guru”
One of the great difficulties we have as practitioners and people involved in a materialistic culture is that we have very little understanding of the longing we feel for the Guru. In a culture that has a spiritual foundation, in a culture that recognizes the role of the Guru, that recognizes the role of the Teacher or that recognizes and approves of a tendency to long for spiritual fulfillment, it is much easier to put a name and a label on that longing.
But in our culture, in order for us to survive that kind of longing, we have to make believe that it’s something else. We have to pretend that it has to do with human relationships. We have to pretend that it has to do with prosperity. We have to pretend that it has to do with a certain lifestyle. We have to pretend that it has to do with intelligence or that it has to do with mental health. We have to pretend all sorts of different things in order to put the longing into some slot that our society recognizes, because if not, as we grow up in the formative years, it’s crushing to know in your heart of hearts that you are very different from others. No one seems to have quite the same feeling that you do.
And so, because it is so crushing, because it is such a lonely thing, often, the very people that longed the most are the ones that diverted that longing into, perhaps, promiscuity, or perhaps becoming almost fanatical about this thought or that thought or this idea or that idea. They could have diverted that longing into drugs or alcohol. They could have diverted that longing into making themselves into a way that they are not, such as a superficial way or a hard way or a tough way or a dull way or a dead way. They might have pretended that they had no feelings in order to deal with the ones that they did have.
Now, it’s true that lots of people have these same feelings and lots of people have these same ways of dealing with feelings. For instance, it’s very possible that someone whose mother or father didn’t love them could become promiscuous simply for that reason. Yet, that does not preclude what I’m saying. You should listen to your life. You should listen to what you did and what was underneath it and you should come to understand that perhaps there was something a little different in your heart and in your mind. It was there and it was with you always.
Copyright © Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. All rights reserved
