Journey of Desire Searching for the Life We'Ve Only Dreamed of

;CHAPTER ONE: ; ;Our Heart's Deepest Secret ; We are never living, but hoping to live. ; ; -Pascal ; It seems to me we can never give up longing and ;wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful ;and good, and we must hunger for them. ; ; -George Eliot ; And I still haven't found what I'm looking for. ; ; -U2 ; ;There is a secret ;set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put ;words to it, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This ;secret remains hidden for the most part in our deepest selves. It is the ;desire for life as it was meant to be. Isn't there a life you have been ;searching for all your days? You may not always be aware of your search, ;and there are times when you seem to have abandoned looking altogether. ;But again and again it returns to us, this yearning that cries out for ;the life we prize. It is elusive, to be sure. It seems to come and go at ;will. Seasons may pass until it surfaces again. And though it seems to ;taunt us, and may at times cause us great pain, we know when it returns ;that it is priceless. For if we could recover this desire, unearth it from ;beneath all other distractions, and embrace it as our deepest treasure, ;we would discover the secret of our existence. ;You see, life comes to all of us as a mystery. ;We all share the same dilemma-we long for life and we're not sure where ;to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing ;for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What ;is available seems at times close to what we want, but never quite a fit. ;Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren't handed out with ;our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize. And ;the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within, the desire ;we often overlook or mistake for something else or even choose to ignore. ;The greatest human tragedy is to give up the search. ;Nothing is of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose ;heart is to lose everything. And if we are to bring our hearts along in ;our life's journey, we simply must not, we cannot, abandon this desire. ;Gerald May writes in The Awakened Heart, ;There is a desire within each of us, in the deep ;center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is ;never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of ;it, but it is always awake . . . Our true identity, our reason for being, ;is to be found in this desire. ;The clue as to who we really are and why we are ;here comes to us through our heart's desire. But it comes in surprising ;ways, and often goes unnoticed or is misunderstood. Once in a while life ;comes together for us in a way that feels good and right and what we've ;been waiting for. These are the moments in our lives that we wish could ;go on forever. They aren't necessarily the "Kodak moments," weddings and ;births and great achievements. More often than not they come in subtler, ;unexpected ways, as if to sneak up on us. ;Think of times in your life that made you wish ;for all the world that you had the power to make time stand still. Are ;they not moments of love, moments of joy? Simple moments of rest and quiet ;when all seems to be well. Something in your heart says, Finally-it has ;come. This is what I was made for! ; ;Whispers of Joy ; ; It was the final evening of our summer vacation. ;We had spent nine wonderful days in the Tetons hiking and swimming, laughing ;and playing, enjoying rare and wonderful time together asEldredge, John is the author of 'Journey of Desire Searching for the Life We'Ve Only Dreamed of' with ISBN 9780785268826 and ISBN 0785268820.