In this episode, I explore why we feel restless and incomplete even after achieving our goals or finding spiritual practices that seem to work. I argue that our perpetual longing isn’t a sign of failure or proof we’re on the wrong path but rather the fundamental nature of consciousness itself, constantly reaching and questioning. The real insight is recognising that seeking is the finding, that the journey itself is home, and learning to treat our restlessness as fuel rather than a problem to solve.
There is a significant element of dysfunction in human consciousness. If you doubt that, read a history book and you can see how insane a lot of that is. If you don’t like history books, turn on the TV tonight and watch the news. Most of what you see is manifestations of that dysfunction in human consciousness. – Eckhart Tolle
So there’s a question that keeps surfacing in my work, one that cuts beneath all the reality tunnels we construct, all the systems we adopt to make sense of the strange business of being human.
The Paradox of Achievement
Why is it that even when we get what we want, all these goals and things we strive for, something still feels incomplete? I’m sure you’ve been there. You set a goal, you’ve been desiring it for a long time. You finally get it. You’re happy for a time, but inevitably some level of discontentment arises and you find yourself in search of that next thing.
This goes for everything, even the practices we’re doing here. You find the framework that seems to finally make sense. For a moment, maybe a day, maybe a month, you feel like you’ve finally found the practice, the spiritual practice that works for you. You feel like you’ve arrived. But then you realize you haven’t. That longing returns. It’s that restless hunger, that sense that there’s something more, something just beyond your current understanding. Something you can’t quite name, but you can definitely feel.
The Wrong Question
Most of us treat this restlessness as evidence of failure. We think maybe we chose the wrong path, the wrong practice, the wrong belief system. And what do we do? We’re back out again, looking again, searching again. The eternal seeker, as I used to describe myself. Whenever I felt I had a practice, I was probably the most discontent. The contentment for me was always when I was seeking for seeking’s sake, no objective, just back in my element when I’m seeking.
I think in a lot of cases we’re asking the wrong question. It’s about the question beneath the question. We keep asking, “What am I looking for?” when the real question might be: Who is doing the looking?
Let that sink in. Who is doing the looking? Another question I ask in my Ascent program is: Who’s the who? Who are you between two thoughts? Take a moment to think about that. Spend some time with it.
Technology vs. Destination
Every system we adopt, whether magical, political, spiritual, or philosophical, is essentially a technology of consciousness. It’s a tool for organizing reality, for making meaning. We are meaning-making machines, trying to create coherence out of the chaos we navigate daily.
The trap we fall into is that we mistake the technology for the destination. We think if we master this system, we will have arrived. We think we’ve found the right practice or understanding and that the longing will stop, that things will be complete.
But the arrival isn’t the point.
Jung understood this. He said the psyche abhors a vacuum. We’re constantly creating narratives, seeking patterns, constructing frameworks. The moment we satisfy one longing, we generate another. It’s not because there’s something wrong with us or because we’re not doing the practice right. It’s literally what our minds do, what consciousness does. It’s the nature of consciousness. It reaches, it questions, it hungers. It perpetually moves toward something it can sense but never quite grasp.
Think about how we got to where we are now. Imagine if we were always content from the time we were apes living in trees. I wouldn’t be out here walking through a field with a mobile phone in my hand if our consciousness, by nature, wasn’t a questing tool.
The Divine Spark
The Gnostics framed it as a divine spark yearning to return home. The Sufis spoke of the lover’s longing for the beloved, a hunger that only intensifies the closer you get to it.
But what if home isn’t a place you arrive at? What if home is the reaching itself? This quest, this journey itself is the destination.
Maybe what we’re really looking for isn’t a thing at all. Maybe it’s the recognition that the longing is the divine speaking. The restlessness you feel isn’t evidence that something’s wrong or proof that you haven’t found the right path yet. It’s the universe experiencing itself as question rather than answer.
In old programming language: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s consciousness doing what consciousness does, reaching beyond itself, questioning itself, transforming itself through the very act of seeking.
What We Do With This
We can stop treating our restlessness as a problem to be solved. We can stop shopping for the system that will finally make it all stop. Instead, we can embrace it, lean into it, get curious about it. We can treat it as data, as a signal, as the voice of something deeper moving through us.
We can practice what some folks call functional restlessness, using that divine discontent as fuel rather than seeing it as evidence of failure. We write the longing, we map it, we follow it, not to make it go away but to see what it’s trying to show us.
The Big Secret
The big secret in the wisdom traditions, if you really pay attention to the subtext, points to this: seeking is the finding, the question is the answer, the longing is the arrival.
You’re already home. You’ve always been home. You’re just experiencing yourself as the journey.
I started the weekly newsletter from last week with a section from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” where he talks about arriving at the beginning and knowing the place for the first time. It’s this idea that when you’re doing this, you’re experiencing yourself as a journey. If you experience yourself as the journey, then you can relax into that and the discontent falls away because you are doing what you were meant to do all along.
Final Thought
To wrap this up: What are you longing for right now? And what if that longing itself is exactly what you’re supposed to be feeling?
Have a good one. Let me hear your thoughts, as always.
