For as long as I can remember, desire has held a complicated place in spiritual conversation. In Buddhism, the teaching is often summarized as “the end of desire,” as though awakening requires us to transcend longing altogether. In the wider spiritual arena, we hear versions of the same message: if you want something, especially love or partnership, you will never receive it, because wanting comes from lack.
But as I look back over my own life, beginning with the vow I made at eight years old to never forget who I truly am, I can see that desire has always been an essential part of my awakening. It has guided me, shaped me, and pulled me toward a deeper truth. Even as a child, that vow was a form of longing, a longing for wholeness, for remembrance, for a life aligned with something sacred and real. It was not ego wanting; it was soul longing. And soul longing is not something to transcend. It is something to honor.
The Buddhist teaching is not actually about eliminating desire, it is about releasing craving, the grasping that says, “I need this to be complete.” That kind of longing comes from the fearful part of the psyche, the wounded ego that searches outside itself for a sense of safety or worth. It tightens the heart. It narrows our perception. It creates attachment that hurts.
But there is another kind of desire, a desire that does not constrict but opens. This desire arises from the quiet center of the soul, the place that already knows its own wholeness. It does not grasp; it simply calls. It moves us gently forward, the way the Tao moves through all things without effort. Taoism has shaped my life for decades, and it continues to teach me that when I am in flow, I am aligned with truth. And when I am out of flow, even if nothing is “wrong,” I can feel something disharmonious inside. Not something dramatic, just the subtle knowing that I am leaning away from my center rather than into it.
Soul longing is the pull that brings us back into that flow. It is desire in its awakened form, desire that does not demand but invites. This kind of longing does not say, “I need this to be whole.” It says, “I am whole, and I desire to express that wholeness.” It is the natural movement of consciousness expanding into life.
Over the years, I have learned that spiritual maturity is not the absence of longing, but the ability to discern where that longing comes from. Ego longing is rooted in fear. Soul longing is rooted in truth. One contracts; the other expands. One seeks to fill a void; the other radiates from fullness. And when desire arises from that deeper place, it becomes a bridge, a path of evolution, not an obstacle to it.
Wanting from fear comes from a sense of lack and control, but wanting from love, presence, wholeness and soul, is not an act of lack, but an act of alignment. It is how life moves through us. It is how Spirit whispers. It is how the next chapter reveals itself.
My own path has been shaped by this inner distinction. I have spent years, truly, a lifetime learning about myself, relationships, intimacy, and the patterns that contributed to relationships ending. Not from a place of self-blame, but from a place of curiosity and responsibility. I’ve come to understand what builds connection and what fractures it, what fosters intimacy and what erodes it, what opens the heart and what shuts it down. The more I’ve awakened, the more I’ve realized that I want to experience a relationship not from ego longing but from soul longing. a companionship rooted in mutual awareness, honesty, wholeness, and emotional intimacy.
I don’t need a relationship to feel complete. I am okay alone, deeply okay. But a soulmate relationship, one that mirrors awakening and invites both partners into deeper truth, feels like a natural expression of my soul. Not a craving. A calling.
This is why I believe that desire, in its awakened form, is essential to our evolution. If we truly ended all desire, we would stop growing. We would stop creating. The universe itself is built on desire, the desire of consciousness to know itself through form. Our soul desires connection, truth, alignment, and resonance because these things support its expansion.
The spiritual path asks us to release the grasping kind of desire, the kind that says, “I need this to survive.” But it does not ask us to abandon the soul’s movement toward wholeness, love, and authenticity. That longing is sacred. It is the compass we are meant to follow.
Equanimity does not mean apathy. It means standing in the middle of experience, neither clinging nor resisting, while allowing the deeper currents of the soul to guide us. From that place, desire becomes peaceful. It becomes clear. It becomes a gentle force of evolution, not a source of suffering.
In the end, the goal is not to extinguish desire, but to awaken it, to let it move through us without fear, without attachment, without distortion. When desire is freed from the ego’s grasp, it becomes what it was always meant to be: a pathway back to our own divine nature.
It becomes the soul remembering itself through longing. It becomes the heart expanding toward love. Life unfolds through us, effortlessly, truthfully, and in harmony with the Tao