Sufism and the Divine Nature of Longing

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The longing you express is the return message from the divine that you seek. The grief you cry out from is what draws you towards union, your pure sadness that wants help. Longing is the craving of the soul. You want to go home. There's a saying in sufism, sufis was at first heartache. And then he said to me, if you're taken by longing, live it. You can't go wrong. If you're going to go to god, go with sweet sorrow in the soul.

Susan Cain is an author who has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TedTalk has been viewed over 30 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. Susan is the author of the book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New York Times Best Selling List and has been translated into 40 languages..

In this episode, Eric and Susan discuss her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

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Susan Cain and I Discuss How to Become Whole Through the Bittersweet and …

Her book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
Why some people really love sad music
How brokenness points in the direction of transcendence
How to know if you tend towards a bittersweet state of mind
Why do some people turn pain into something beautiful and in other cases people are broken by life’s difficulties
The way of “even so”
Union between souls when sorrow is shared
Understanding the messiness and unpredictability of grief
The mystery of bittersweet
The divine nature of longing
How longing is different from craving
Being open to great states of transition as gateways in our life
Moving on vs. Moving forward
Poignancy
What it means to turn in the direction of beauty