Longing: A Pilgrimage to Your Quiet Power Within
By Christopher Sansone, PhD (www.livelifesoul.com)
There is a moment many of us can recall with vivid clarity —when the noise of life fell away, and something stirred quietly within us. Perhaps it came while standing beneath a vast night sky, sitting at the edge of the ocean, holding a sleeping child, or recovering from heartbreak. In that instant, we felt a pull, a whisper, a subtle ache. A yearning for something more — not more achievement, not more possessions, but something deeper. Something true.
This feeling is universal. It is ancient. And it is not a sign that something is wrong with us. On the contrary, it is the very force trying to lead us back to ourselves.
In Longing: A Pilgrimage to Your Quiet Power Within, I explore this profound inner movement — what I call longing — and reveal it as one of the most overlooked and misunderstood spiritual forces available to us. Longing is not an emptiness to escape but a compass that points toward our highest truth. Every person carries it. Every person feels it. And every person can learn to follow it back home.
The Wound Beneath Our Lives
From the moment we are born, we begin absorbing messages — subtle, unspoken, generational — about who we must be to be worthy of love, protection, and belonging. These messages shape us long before we have the capacity to question them. They are formed from the struggles of our caregivers, who themselves inherited emotional patterns from their own parents. Left unabated we risk spending most of our lives feeding a false mind, figuring out how to fit in and, bypassing the brilliance of our own true nature.
I call this inherited lovelessness—using Pamela Kribbe’s term for the systematic passing down wounding, limiting beliefs, and conditioned roles. It is not a reflection of poor parenting or malice. Rather, it reflects our humanity. Most of us were loved by people who had not yet learned how to love themselves.
And so we learned early to adapt — to be good, agreeable, high-achieving, self-sufficient, invisible, funny, helpful, or strong. We learned to become whatever we believed would keep us safe. The cost of adapting is steep as we slowly drift away from the truth of who we are.
But our soul never forgets. Deep inside, it continues to whisper. It continues to call us back.
The Sacred Paradox of Shame
Healing begins with seeing a paradox we all share: shame—the painful belief that we’re flawed or unworthy—points to the very doorway to spiritual transformation. Though shame can feel destructive, it also serves a purposeful role. Like the grain of sand that irritates the oyster into making a pearl, shame agitates us into seeking something greater. It invites us to challenge illusions we inherited. It pushes us to look inward, to question, and to discover the luminous self-hidden beneath layers of conditioning.
Shame is not the truth of who we are. It is simply the keyhole through which we must pass to reclaim ourselves.
Longing: The Soul’s Quiet Language
Longing is the soul’s way of calling us inward. It appears as:
- A hunger for meaning or deeper gratification
- A sense that something in life isn’t quite aligned
- A desire for connection or authenticity
- A pull toward creativity, healing, or spiritual exploration
- A subtle ache that resurfaces when life becomes quiet
We sense longing by our desires, our dreams, our strivings, our pain, and our creative impulses. It emerges in synchronicities that catch our attention, in moments of intuition that arrive out of nowhere, in brief flashes of clarity that seem too delicate to grasp.
When the logical mind cannot see the path forward, longing always does.
It asks us to surrender certainty. It asks us to become curious. It asks us to trust the unseen movements of soul.
The journey that unfolds when we follow longing is what I call the pilgrimage within — a sacred inner passage that leads us from wounded identity into wholeness.
The Pilgrimage: Returning to True Self
One of the central messages of the book is that spiritual awakening is not reserved for monks, mystics, or those with extraordinary life stories. It is for every one of us. It is built into the design of human consciousness.
The pilgrimage begins when we recognise that the pain we carry — abandonment, shame, fear, trauma — is not a sign of brokenness but an invitation. It is the soul signalling that a deeper truth is waiting to be revealed.
Through reflection, guided experiences, personal stories, and ancient teachings, I invite readers to explore:
- The wound of separation that begins at birth and the purpose it serves in our evolution
- The self-limiting patterns we unconsciously inherit
- The ego’s misguided attempts to keep us safe, and its true role
- The power of emotional vulnerability to open the gates of transformation
- Emotions as the wavelengths of soul
- The body as the vibrational passage for divine flow
- The multi-layered human through the yogic koshas
- The sacred necessity of forgiveness
- The power of stillness
- The presence of our own “soul genius” and how to listen for it
This journey is not abstract. It is deeply practical. It guides us to listen, to feel, to reflect, and to gently begin dismantling the barriers between who we have been and who we truly are.
Five Stories of Transformation
In Longing, I share the stories of five individuals who faced painful life experiences that ultimately awakened profound spiritual insight. The stories are not dramatic for drama’s sake. They are chosen because they mirror the inner landscapes that so many of us navigate quietly: grief, trauma, shame, fear, disorientation, and longing for freedom.
In their struggles, we see our own. In their breakthroughs, we see what is possible. These real human stories make clear that the soul is always leading us home, even when we feel lost.
The Soul Genius: Your Unique Purpose
Every person has a “soul genius” — distinctive inner essence, purpose, and gifts they can usher into the world. This genius is not measured by productivity or status. It reveals itself through authenticity and aliveness.
Longing points us toward it.
Stillness nourishes it.
Forgiveness clears the path for it.
And self-love allows it to flourish.
When we live from this place, we do more than heal ourselves — we become pillars of healing for others.
Why This Work Matters Now
Across the world, people are experiencing a shift. Traditional labels, rigid belief systems, old power structures and roles are losing their grip. Many feel called to authenticity, purpose, and spirit. Younger generations, especially, are seeking connection to vibrancy, something beyond tired dogma.
We are remembering, awakening beyond mere coping, performing, or surviving.
The longing within each of us is evolutionary–a global phenomenon — a collective movement toward truth.
Longing is a companion for that movement. It is an offering for anyone who senses that there is more to life than what they have been taught. It is a light in the doorway for those who are ready to step into a life of meaning and gratitude for being alive.
Coming Home to Yourself
The greatest spiritual discovery any of us can make is not that we are flawed or incomplete, but that we have always been whole. The quiet, powerful self we long for has never left us. It waits patiently beneath the noise of daily life, beneath fear, beneath shame, beneath every role we have had to play.
Our task — our privilege — is to return to it.
Longing: A Pilgrimage to Your Quiet Power Within is an invitation to walk that path with courage, curiosity, and love. It is a reminder that no matter how far we feel from ourselves, we are never more than one breath, one moment of awareness, one act of compassion away from coming home.
Longing: A Pilgrimage to Your Quiet Power Within by Chris Sansone is available wherever books are sold. Visit www.livelifesoul.com for more information.
BOOK LINK: https://amzn.to/457slvU
