I sometimes experience a state that I call yearning but I’m not clear what it is that I want.
Yearning is a special work state. Do not confuse it with wanting.
Wanting means to be lacking something — to be without something that is desirable. What I want is knowable, not mysterious. It may take a moment to untangle various wants and the irritation they typically give rise to but this is not difficult. The answer is usually something specific, a thing or a form of behaviour I want from others.
By comparison, yearning or longing is nameless. However, the mind is not satisfied with this so it seeks to define what you are yearning for. And whatever it is that you think you are yearning for quickly dispels the experience of yearning. Why? Because this process turns a feeling into a thought, a yearning into a want. The experience of yearning is satisfied by itself. Yearning itself is what we are yearning for; it is its own answer. If you can stay with it, leaving aside the need to think it through, yearning unfolds and reveals itself as a connection or relationship with the unknown that was missing and now is found.
