Reaching vs. Opening: From Tṛṣṇā to Prīti to the Home Beneath All Longing

There is a kind of longing that reaches out like a hand in the dark — straining, searching, aching to be filled.

This is tṛṣṇā—the thirsty longing that comes from absence.

It forms in the places where love was missing.

Where presence was unreliable.

Where we had to perform instead of rest.

Tṛṣṇā says:

“Maybe if I try harder, hold tighter, stay softer, shine brighter—then I’ll be safe. Then I’ll be loved.”

It’s not wrong.

It’s a wise survival strategy.

But when we live from it too long, it exhausts us.

It replaces connection with grasping.

And it makes love feel always just out of reach.

But underneath this survival-driven longing,

there is another current:

a quieter, older one.

Prīti.

A Sanskrit word for gentle joy.

For the sweetness that arises when something resonates.

When we feel life moving toward us, not as demand, but as invitation.

Prīti listens.

It responds.

It is the body’s quiet yes.

It doesn’t hunger—it remembers.

Because resonance is not about finding something new.

It’s about recognizing what is already true.

And this is the deeper truth:

Joy and love are not things we earn or find.

They are what we are.

They are the fragrance of our natural state.

The joy you feel in moments of connection—

that swelling of warmth, the softening, the delight—

that’s not a gift from outside you.

That’s a momentary revealing of what’s always been within.

A lifting of the veil.

But even that is just how it feels from the side of the mind.

Because in reality—

there is no veil.

Only the flicker of forgetting.

Only the moment when we take ourselves to be separate

from what we’ve never stopped being:

Whole.

Radiant.

Beloved.

You are not becoming love.

You are not returning to love.

You are remembering you are it.

And when you move toward resonance—

when prīti stirs in your chest like light catching on water—

you are not reaching out.

You are being what you always were.