Loneliness. Such a feeling of empty longing. A deep ache. Such a draw to blame it on all kinds of causes: social media, a house move, demands of health, family or work. On things that can’t be changed, so you’re stuck. Such a temptation to fill it with something, anything. Activities, people, substances. Diversions seen as damaging, like alcohol, violence, harm. Diversions using everyday activities, like work, family, exercise, entertainment. Diversions seen as noble, the subtle things, that don’t look like excuses, though you secretly know that they are.
And how everywhere you look, it seems other people have the thing you want the most. The baby, health, partner, job, knowledge, social life, best friend … that would make your life complete. But you’re a nice girl or a good boy, so you paste on a smile and try to be pleased for them. And you do a decent enough job, even though inside you’re crying.
And, actually, that’s where the problem lies. A case of mistaken identity. Because as soon as that line is drawn between others and yourself, there is separation and loneliness, by definition. It’s not possible to be otherwise. That separate self is one and the same as the feeling of loneliness. It is the echo, you see, of the knowledge that we are not separate. But that knowledge is obscured. Our true nature of obscured by fear and desire. Fear of feeling the loneliness. Desire to not feel the loneliness. Fear and desire hold the perceived separation in place.
Are you willing to sit with the feeling of loneliness? Not to hide from it. Not to fill the space. Not to get over it. Without trying to rationalise it. Simply be. To come to a point where you could happily live with this feeling, for the whole of your life. Without resistance. To gently welcome the feeling. With no expectation. With no intention for change. A total surrender of the need for the feeling to be anything other than it is here and now. Could you love the feeling, and stay with it?
It might seem overwhelming. But it is the personal self who believes that. Awareness, the true self, cannot be overwhelmed by a feeling.
Stay with it. Bring it closer. Until there is no boundary between the feeling and your own being. And, when you truly know loneliness as intimately as your own being, you will see it for what it is – Awareness.
The ache of longing recognised as the call of True Nature, seen from the perspective of a separate self. And in that recognition, a dissolving of the separate self into its true nature. Without separation, there is no loneliness, nothing to resist, no feeling to carefully stage manage, no ticking time bomb. Without separation, there is freedom to engage fully in life, without fear.
Here, Now, you are perfectly complete, perfectly happy, perfectly, magnificently, One.
With Love,
Sara
