Longing as Spiritual Practice

Mirabai's entire spiritual practice was organized around longing—virahe bhakti, the bhakti of separation. She cultivated her longing for Krishna, held it, deepened it, lived in it fully. Western psychology often treats longing as a problem to be solved, a deficiency to be remedied. Mirabai teaches a different relationship: longing itself becomes the practice, the path, the destination. In anticipatory grief, we naturally long for what we fear losing—for a stable climate, for institutions that work, for the future we expected. Rather than suppressing or solving this longing, we can practice it: attending to it, expressing it, deepening our understanding of what we actually long for. This sustained attention transforms longing from a painful absence into a living presence—a connection to what we love, a clarification of values, a bridge to others who long similarly. The practice of longing, held with Mirabai's devotional intensity, becomes a source of spiritual depth and aliveness even—or especially—amid grief.