We Are Not Alone

No natural need can exist without that which has been created to directly answer it. For instance, a creature couldn't thirst for water if water didn't preexist its need to drink. This feeling of attraction that we have -- whether to take a drink of water or connect with the world above us -- is proof of the existence of two parties. First, is the part of us that feels this draw, and then there is by necessity something acting upon us to create the longing itself. As paradoxical as it may seem, if we are moved to seek the Divine, it's because the Divine is calling us! Let's pause here to see how this celestial need expresses itself through some simple examples that are common to all of us: Where does our longing for someone to love originate? Is it not with the awakening of an internal force urging us to explore and experience the deepest parts of ourselves? When we say -- or feel toward another -- "You complete me," what we're really saying is something like "Through you I've realized parts of myself I wouldn't have known even existed; you have helped introduce me to who I really am."

Perhaps we've a yearning to learn how to paint, write poetry, climb a mountain, or become a chef. We are drawn to that pursuit -- whatever its nature -- for much the same reason we search for a lover. Something in us knows that it is only through this relationship that we will be introduced to -- awakened to -- our own higher possibilities.

C. S. Lewis, the great author, essayist, and Christian apologist, supports this important finding:

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if IT should really become manifest --if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, "Here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. --The Problem of Pain

The need for whatever it may be that we're drawn to is the yet to be realized presence within us of that very thing to which we are drawn. This means that no matter how distant seems our guiding star, or how isolated we may feel in our journey towards its light, these higher truths we're learning would have us know otherwise; we are not alone....