The Sufi does not meditate to escape the world. The Sufi meditates to remember. To remember the Beloved — and the Beloved is what you have been calling, in your loneliest hours, by many names.
The longing in your chest is not a problem to be solved. It is the rope by which you are being pulled home.
The heart, not the head
In this path the heart is not a metaphor. It is an organ of perception. The mind doubts and analyzes; the heart knows. When you sit, do not sit in your head. Drop your attention down into the center of the chest. Breathe there. The work happens in that secret room.
Dhikr — remembrance
On the inhale, silently let one syllable rise — perhaps a name of the Beloved in whatever tradition speaks to you, or simply a word like Hu, or Beloved, or Love. On the exhale, let the heart soften toward what you have just named.
Some practitioners repeat the name aloud in low rhythmic breath; some only in the silence of the heart. Both are valid. The point is not the volume. The point is that with each breath you are turning back, turning back, turning back.
Make room for longing
If tears come, let them. If a sweetness comes, let it. If nothing comes and the heart feels like a closed door, knock on it patiently. The door is opened from inside, in its own time, never by force.
The longing itself is the proof that something in you knows what it loves. Do not be embarrassed by it. The mystics were never embarrassed by it.