Our Hearts Are Restless

Human beings have a deep, inherent longing that can be fulfilled only by God. This restlessness is not a sign of deficiency, but rather a pointer toward a higher purpose and a connection with the divine. Rest, refuge, and revelation lead us back home. As St. Augustine wrote in his 4th-century autobiography Confessions: ““You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Those seeking God experience a deep yearning that is not easily satisfied or attained. When people acknowledge that feeling of restlessness and the need for deeper meaning in their lives, it indicates they are ready to take a journey into the unknown; a journey that is mysterious, perhaps frightening, certainly difficult – yet compelling. To turn this concept into a reality, seekers must fix their attention on the Lord to use and channel their restlessness toward union with him. This is not easy, since the Lord is a mystery.

The great thing about this mystery, though, is that we know the ending: we are going home. But the process takes time, and we need to participate in the mystery to experience it. We must commit and show up to make ourselves available to meet the Lord, and we can do this only by following his teachings. For most of us, the mystery is not revealed easily or quickly. The human condition is such that we doubt and question the existence of God. We struggle between hope and fear of disappointment. Are we willing to take a chance and believe in the existence of a divine power?

This journey back to the Lord is a solitary quest, based on love, faith, and devotion. It is not a journey taken with a group of friends, or one in which we will be surrounded by comfortable worldly possessions. While this journey may appear to be a lonely one, we discover over time that we are never alone. When one sincerely searches, the Lord reveals himself to us when we are ready. Often people undertake this search because they are dissatisfied, disillusioned, and disoriented in the world. We may have lost heart, shed some tears, but we feel a yearning and a pull that we are helpless to ignore.

Our hearts are restless, yet hopeful that we will find more than we experience in the daily drama of this world. In this state of readiness and wonder, we start the long journey home by turning inward. Because we have been lost and wandering in this outer world for eons, it soon becomes clear that our inward search is not straightforward. We discover that we need a guide who has made the journey himself, a living master who has the power to lead us back to our spiritual home.

Maharaj Sawan Singh tells us in Philosophy of the Masters, Vol. 5:

Spirituality is a difficult path and cannot be trodden without the company of a Master…. To walk on this path is to tread on a razor’s edge. There is danger at every step. He who wishes to know the reality or to get true knowledge and to meet the Lord should seek a perfect Master who knows the way.

We need a living master because mystics have solved the riddle of death. They know how to become one with the Lord, to die to the world while living in this body. When we take our last breath, if we have found a true master, we are under his protection. When the time comes for the body to be shed and the soul to be freed, the Master has prepared us to let go so that we are no longer caught in the cycle of birth and death.

Only those marked souls in a human body have the opportunity to realize the Lord and go back home, which is why to be born human is a great blessing. But through our actions in past lives, we have become trapped in a vast karmic web. We can move around within the web, but we cannot escape it without divine help. The web may get bigger and create an illusion that we have some control over our lives. But do we? Or are we just wandering around in illusion creating more and more karma?

We can mitigate the illusion and influence of this world only by turning inward under the guidance of a true master. If we choose to follow him, the Lord helps us slowly surrender and detach ourselves from the karmic web of the world.

The inner journey is a lifetime commitment. When we start out, we often have no idea where we are going or how to get there. We have forgotten the way. Disciples are given the tool of meditation and a roadmap with clues of what we will encounter. The Master is always there to provide love, support, and guidance. While this path requires us to turn inward, we are not alone, and most important, not lonely. Our sacred bond with the Master protects the solitude we need for the journey. While it may seem as if we travel alone in this struggle to liberate the soul, it is in these moments of solitude in our meditation that we are strengthening our partnership with the Master. Leaning into him, we learn to love without reservation, which opens the portal back to the Lord.

Until union with the divine is achieved, the heart – that is, the soul – remains restless, missing the Lord. The only way to quell those feelings of separation and loss is to surrender and rest in him. The Master is doing everything possible to bring us home, but we must do our part. We must put in effort by doing our meditation and learn to trust the process so we can let go and surrender. We need to do a complete reversal in life – go inward rather than outward.

Along the way, we might ponder: what am I learning? Am I making progress? Hopefully, we learn to trust the Master. Saints enjoin us not to be concerned about our progress. Instead, they tell us to ‘do it now.’ Don’t wait – accept the invitation. Being initiated and practising the life of a disciple is the only thing in life that grows and grows. Everything else in this world dissipates, disappoints and disappears. If we want to get out of this world and the endless cycle of transmigration, we learn that our spiritual practice is the only thing worth doing, the only real and lasting experience. Nothing in this world is sustainable. Without this body we have no identity, we don’t exist here. The only two events that happen to all humans are birth and death. We come into this world and after a relatively short time, we die. What counts is what we do in between birth and death. Do we bumble aimlessly along, or do we work to awaken our inner consciousness, our soul, so that we can become free of this world? During much of our lives, we are unaware of this greater purpose. Yet, for those marked souls the Lord calls back to himself, he sends a living master to shepherd them back home.

This path is known as the science of the soul. When we are called home the experiment begins. The research is conducted in a laboratory of our body. We have a body, mind, and soul. Until the mind is tamed, it controls the soul and works hard to keep it trapped in this world. In the search for the Lord, marked souls are taken on an inner journey, where the soul can soar and regain its freedom once the karmic account is balanced.

While we may struggle to reconcile our spiritual efforts with our worldly commitments, we must do both to finish off our karma. When that release comes, the body and mind are no longer needed.

We can experience this spiritual awakening; it is not just theory or idle talk. It is possible through inner transformation, which is beyond our imagination. To realize this inner transformation, we must redirect our energy from outer worldly endeavors – our jobs, our possessions, our relationships – to our inner work. When our attachment to the Lord becomes our priority, everything else becomes unimportant and useless. Nothing goes with us at the time of death. So, the sooner we can let go of all these attachments, the sooner our soul can soar. Saints tell us that only devotion to the Lord is lasting and worthy of our time. According to the Sufi mystic Inayat Khan, quoted in the book Awakening: A Sufi Experience: “The fulfillment of the Divine purpose is to be found in the human being who is God conscious.”

Let us become God-conscious. If we want to make that journey home, we have to believe God-consciousness is possible and really want it. We must demonstrate our faith, love, and devotion by making an effort to experience the mystery through meditation. Saints want everything from their disciples. They want our hearts and souls, for only they care for us so tenderly. No matter how little, how slowly, how poorly we may feel we are doing, the Master sees and accepts our every effort, and our connection to the Lord grows stronger and stronger through that master-disciple relationship.

The Guru is the Word. He is a link between man and God. He is the one who takes people back to the Lord. After fulfilling his allotted task, he merges back into the Word. Likewise, the soul is also a ray of the Word, and through the grace of a true Master it is able to return and unite itself with the Word. Guru Nanak says, “The Guru is Shabd, and the soul is its disciple.”
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, The Path}

As the soul merges in the Shabd, that sacred bond with the divine has been achieved. Our hearts are no longer restless.