The movement towards total union appears first as a longing and yearning to be united with the inner beloved. This is how the way of love looks at the movement towards realization and enlightenment. If we stay with that longing—if we don’t deny it or push it away—it will confront us with the fact of the separateness that underlies it. That separateness, that gap, can then be revealed as the loss of the positive merged condition (or its absence) in early childhood—with all the deprivations, frustrations, emptiness, dryness, and coldness we experienced at that time. As we allow ourselves to experience that sense of separation and all the feelings associated with it, we will see that it is a specific hole, a particular type of emptiness, an absence that feels like a longing for something we love that we feel is missing. Longing always indicates both a separateness and a love. What is important to understand is that the state of separateness we are talking about here is a specific deficiency, a specific lack, which is the lack of the merged condition itself.

Taken together, all of these insights show us that in order to integrate the aspect of merging gold—which is important in attaining the station of union with the beloved—we need to disassociate that state from its connections with the various manifestations and relationships in our lives. This is especially true of the dual unity, the symbiotic relationship with mother. If the station of union itself doesn't get disassociated from the dual unity—from the belief, the conviction, that we can have that union only if we are in a certain relationship with a specific person—then we won't recognize it or integrate it as a manifestation of our own beingness. In other words, we usually see that state of union as being conditional—dependent on a particular situation. But no aspect of essence can be conditioned by a specific relationship or set of circumstances. We need to be free from that conditionality in order to integrate the merging gold essence, and then we can experience things in a way that makes the state of union available naturally. Otherwise, union will always elude us; we will continue to look for it in various manifestations or relationships that are determined by the specific conditions of the dual unity we experienced when we were babies.

So we need to look at our life and our humanness from that perspective. We need to learn that if we are going to arrive at that ultimate fulfillment, we don't want to get stuck forever at any one station on our journey. We want to keep rending the veils until union is complete—because nothing else will truly fulfill the heart. No situation, no relationship with another person or group, no activity, no interest, no accomplishment, no knowledge, no understanding—nothing in the world—can take the place of that union. And if we recognize our heart's deepest desire for this union—our total yearning for it—and start to allow that longing, then it is possible for us to arrive at that union. It is possible for the heart to be fulfilled—and to be fulfilled in such a fundamental way that our life situations truly fulfill us—not as a substitute but as a manifestation of that complete union.

Of course, most of the time we don't recognize the situation that we are in. We don't realize the effect of not being in that union. We don't understand that this is the reason why we are lonely. We don't understand that this is why we are sad. We don't understand that this is why we are suffering. We don't understand that this is why we are dissatisfied. We explain our situation by giving all kind of reasons, without recognizing that the most important—the central, primary—element is the absence of intimate union with what our heart loves more than anything or anyone, whether or not we know it consciously. We make so many things more important without understanding what is most central to our well-being. What does it matter what we do in our life? What does it matter if I go here or go there? Or if I have this possession or I don't have it? If I’m in this situation or that situation? Whether somebody likes me or doesn't like me? Whether I have this job or engage in this activity or some other one? Whether I'm helping this person or not, or some other person? What does anything really matter if my heart is not happy with itself, if it is not in intimate union with the only thing that can make it totally happy?

Without that meeting with the Guest, without that intimate familiarity with the Beloved, we are fundamentally, ontologically, existentially alone. We are separated from our Beloved. We use the name “our Beloved” because our heart will not feel completely happy, delighted, fulfilled, contented, and rested until it meets with the true object of the heart, the true love of our soul’s heart. It is this principle, or this understanding, that we want to explore in some detail. We want to understand how to recognize and intimately live our life from the knowledge that we are not a product of this physical realm of sight and sound. Our union is with the Beloved, and that union is not something of this world.

<p>This ultimate union with the Beloved, and the degrees of nearness to it, is the prototype and ground of all close relationships. It is the original seed, or original truth, that gives close relationships their meaning, as well as their joys and difficulties. Close relationships are called love relationships, intimate relationships, because they are about intimacy and closeness and, ultimately, about union. All desire, all yearning, for nearness and union in any relationship, in any situation, is a reflection of the original yearning, of the deepest heart's desire—union with the Beloved. But intimate personal connections are not the only ones that manifest as reflections or expressions of this condition of union. There are many others, such as sexual unions, the sharing and giving between friends, or an appreciation of and desire for togetherness with family. The need for a sense of community, for connection, companionship, bonding—all of these are reverberations, reflections, of one original truth, which is the union with the Beloved and the longing for that union when it isn't there. </p>