Most of my life before studying Tantra, I thought of longing as something secret—something to be hidden away. It lived unnamed in the shadows, something I wasn’t supposed to want too much or reach for too openly. Longing, I believed, was for what couldn’t be had—an ache for something unattainable.
There was a kind of nobility in suppressing it, or so I thought. The quiet discipline of not wanting too much. Wanting too much translated into being greedy in my life growing up in a family of 9 children. But what I didn’t see was how that withholding turned into self-denial—how it slowly drained color and breath from the very pulse of my life.
It wasn’t until a class on the Mahavidyas—the ten goddesses or cosmic powers in Tantra—that something inside me began to stir differently. We were exploring the vastness of these archetypes: fierce, wild, radiant expressions of the Divine Feminine—each holding both light and shadow, wisdom and chaos.
As the teaching unfolded, I found myself touching into a part of me I’d never given voice to. A deep rumble began in my belly, and tears rose, thick and hot, behind my eyes. My teacher gently asked, “What’s coming up?”
The words came through me like a storm breaking open the sea:
“I long for so much at times I’m afraid naming it will consume me.”
It felt terrifying to say out loud—to admit the hunger that had lived unnamed for so long.
Through a simple breath process, my teacher not only guided me but she pushed me to not only stay with the feeling, to allow it to move from deep in my womb, allow it to birth through me—to name my longings one by one. And when I did, something ancient and wild tore through me. My tears became a torrent. My screams filled the room.
Holding them in, I realized, had been holding back my life.
The sound that poured out wasn’t just grief—it was everything: joy, shame, desire, love, rage, and pleasure all braided together. It was the truth of a woman remembering that longing itself is holy. That to long is to live.
That moment was almost fifteen years ago, yet it sometimes feels like yesterday. The memory still lives in my body, alive in the threads of who I am now. I can still feel the edge of it when I catch myself holding back—hesitating to name what I truly want.
I see it in my longing to fully step into the work that feeds my soul and that I know can bring abundance and purpose into my life. I see it in my longing to release the weight I still carry—both the physical and the emotional kind. In my longing for more pleasure, more sex, more touch, more friendship and connection. In my longing to be seen and accepted more deeply in a family that I know loves me, and yet in which I still sometimes feel like an outcast.
In my longing to know what it feels like to have a true partner in my life, one that unabashedly loves me and says it out loud for the world to hear and whispers it to as we lay down together at night.
These are the longings that whisper beneath the surface. They are not demands or flaws—they are prayers waiting to be spoken.
And sometimes, when a longing is deep enough, it starts to move life itself.
Africa Calling
Years after that class, a new call began to rise within me—a pull I couldn’t explain or quiet. It came first in dreams: white lions appearing in golden light, pressing their foreheads to mine and whispering, “It’s time to remember.”
That call led me to Africa.
Following that longing felt like following a thread through lifetimes. In Gonarezhou—“the place of elephants”—I walked among the great matriarchs, those who carry memory and grief in their bones. One day, we met an elephant with a broken tusk, and immediately I thought of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. His presence felt like a living teaching—showing me that even brokenness can be sacred strength.
Another day, an elephant with two injured feet limped into our camp in the middle of the day and slowly laid himself down, lifting one wounded leg as if asking for help. Our group could feel his longing for relief, his trust in us. We poured water over his massive body, our tears mixing with the dust as we prayed for his healing. The sound that followed—his deep, resonant rumbles—rolled through the air and into the earth beneath us. It was gratitude, ancient and wordless, vibrating through the land and into our hearts.
And, then our last night in the place of elephants something extraordinary happened. In the dusk of the setting sun we watched as the injured elephant slowly made his way alone across the dry riverbank where our camp stood. It was unusual for him to be without his herd or Memory as a herd of elephants is called. Every few steps he would stop, silently lifting his injured foot as though to offer himself a moment’s relief. Then he would trumpet—a low, aching sound that seemed to rise from the earth itself, a cry of longing for ease.
As he moved, we noticed a lone male lion following at a distance. Each time the elephant stopped and lifted his foot, the lion would pause and rest on his paws—almost in prayer. Our guide whispered that we were witnessing something few ever see. Sometimes, he said, animals in the wilds of Africa who know they cannot go on walk this way, surrendering themselves to the greater whole. The lion was simply responding. This ancient ritual between them, he explained, was part of the circle of life, two powerful beings meeting each other in their own longing. One longing for release, another longing for sustenance-survival—the pride would likely surround the elephant later that night. Longing being met in its most primal form: difficult, sacred, and profoundly beautiful in its simplicity.
Later, I sat in silence with the water shaman, Baba Mandaaza, whose presence was like an echo of the rivers themselves—gentle, timeless, and knowing. And then, finally, I met and communed with the white lions—the embodiment of divine consciousness, protectors of the sacred balance between heaven and earth.
My longing was met and fulfilled in Africa-in ways that are still unfolding, even now, almost ten years later. That journey reminded me that longing is not just a desire of the heart—it is the language of the soul calling itself home.
Finding Home
Tantra taught me that longing isn’t a weakness—it’s an audacious act of faith. It’s the soul remembering what it came here for. Longing is often the place where we learn to expand our capacity. When you tap into your limits of your capacity in any given situation or relationship allow yourself to rest and regroup. Then you have two choices. The first is stay exactly where you are and see that limit of capacity in that situation is actually a newly discovered boundary or end point. The second is to acknowledge you desire to expand your capacity for that thing or relationship and move forward with the Audacity to Long. Discover what is needed to expand your capacity beyond what you see or feel in that moment. Both choices are valid and courageous in their own way.
The audacity of longing is in letting it be named. In daring to feel it so deeply that it moves through you and becomes creation itself.
Longing, when honored, doesn’t consume you. It becomes you. It births you into a fuller expression of who you already are.
And maybe that’s what the goddesses, the elephants, and the lions and my own inner knowing were whispering all along: that our deepest desires aren’t here to shame us— they’re here to awaken us.
This remembering lives at the heart of The Elimination Code—the courage to clear what no longer serves, so that what is true, sacred, and alive can rise. The white lions call it Pride Energy: the return to clarity, focus, purpose, and divine action born from the truth of our own longing.
So I’ll leave you with this question:
What longing lives deep within you that you aren’t naming? Be audacious. Breathe it. Release it.
