You feel spiritually alone, no one shares your longing

This spiritual loneliness, carrying a deep longing no one around you seems to share, is one of the quieter sorrows of the seeking life, and I want to ease it. Your longing joins you to countless others, unseen — across all times and places, vast numbers have felt exactly this longing, so you are part of an enormous if invisible company of seekers, and the people near you may feel it too in secret, each believing themselves alone as you do; you are not a lone freak of longing but one of a great multitude. You can find the others if you seek them — communities of the spiritually longing exist, in groups and gatherings and traditions, so the loneliness is often a matter of not having found your people yet, not of their nonexistence, and finding even a few who share your longing transforms it. And the great seekers and their writings are companions across time — the mystics and poets of every age left records of their longing, and in reading them you find kindred spirits who understood exactly your ache, companions across the centuries who reach you through their words. You are in good and vast company. Where might you begin looking for the others?