Sacred Waiting

“We often fear that something is missing within us, that something is wrong with us. We live with the pervasive sense that we are not enough, and no matter how much we try, we will never be enough … We keep waiting for something to complete us.

    This is “worldly waiting” – waiting for something better to happen in a moment in the future. There is also such a thing as “sacred waiting.” Sacred waiting is a receptivity of heart. We are not waiting for something to occur that is not happening now. Rather, we are open to the sacred revealing itself in the here and now.

     It is paradoxically true that something is missing, the wisdom of knowing that nothing is missing.”

     If knowing that nothing is missing is the only thing keeping us from a sense of completeness as author Narayan Liebenson claims, then why do I feel so empty so much of the time? And not only that, but why do so many of us who are citizens of First World countries still feel that we are not enough despite the fact that we have more than enough of just about everything?

     My guess is that most of us have discovered that “worldly waiting” is a pretty futile affair. We’ve come to know that the accumulation of things no matter how “shiny,” and no person however ideal, can give us the sense of completeness/enoughness for which we long; and we know that if we continue to wait for something outside of ourselves to make us whole, we will wait in vain.

     However, if you are like me, despite knowing its futility you continue to wait in a worldly way for a worldly something or someone to fill the void, to take away the emptiness, to dispel the feeling that “something is wrong with us.” But the only thing that can give us a sense of inner wholeness is a connection with our soul, that sacred dimension of our being that is our essential self and, without the awareness of which, we will never be content.

     Our soul is waiting to reveal itself to us in the here and now Liebenson says. It is our willingness to experience this sacred self and the discipline to sit quietly in the present moment that can be the crack in the door that allows the awareness of our soul to enter our consciousness and bring us the completion we think is missing.