“Longing is the sweet pain of belonging to God,” he writes. “Once longing is awakened within the heart it is the most direct way Home. Like the magnet, it draws us deep within our own heart where we are made whole and transformed. This is why the Sufi mystics have always stressed the importance of longing. The great Sufi Ibn Arabi prayed, ‘Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love,’ while Rumi expressed the same truth in simple terms, ‘Do not seek for water, be thirsty.’
