Loneliness versus Aloneness: one of these can change your life
I stood in the middle of the forest that night. No electric poles to light-up the path. No full moon to sparkle upon the leaves. A darkness like no other. Yet, there was a peace beyond the darkness. As serene as a still pond. As still as a sleeping flower. Then, the realization that after all, the being alone is far from the feeling of loneliness - I was all-one.
We have all experienced the feeling of loneliness. When there is no-one to talk to. When you feel isolated and disconnected. When you are away from family and friends. Let’s look at the repercussions one leans into when you have this feeling of loneliness. For example, people turn to alcohol, or over-eating, or the over consumption of cigarettes and other activities. I don’t want to go into all the examples here. But it seems, we have made a huge fuss over how terrible it is to be lonely. We have such a negative correlation which loneliness.
Why has loneliness become such a global health issue? Can we go into it?
Is it because you need to feel like you have a friend? Isn’t that what we’ve all been taught - the power of social connection, being in contact with people, having someone who likes or “loves” you and you back? Is that “love”?
Is it because you need to feel purpose? How do I fit into this world? What is my mission or purpose in life? Do you need to search for the feeling of purpose to give you a sense of life? I thought the purpose of life is just to live without purpose.
Or is it that you need to have a sense of acceptance? Perhaps you need to feel like you belong in society, that others are approving who you are for your individualism. That your social media post received 1 dislike and a million likes, you still focus on the dislike. “I am not understood. I am not accepted”. Is that it?
Suppose I feel lonely because of one or more of these reasons. There might be no sense of relationship with another human being, or very little communication with the “outside” world. “I have no friends” for example. So what do I do? I may either choose to go out drinking alone at a bar, or playing video games all night, or find some other form of entertainment. Or I may choose to spend some time visiting shrines and temples or going on a holiday to Japan. Aren’t these all forms of escape? Entertainment? Did you realize you are unable to solve loneliness if this is a fact? Running away from what is. When one feels the sense of loneliness, are you frightened? Frightened that you don’t have a deep relationship with another? Frightened that you don’t have a relationship with your ideal for living, such as a purpose? Frightened that you are not understood or accepted by others? And so entertainment because your “go to” substitute for the things you feel you lack.
Many of us join communities to feel a sense of shared purpose and the potential for people to like or love me and accept me. But communities too, are breeding grounds for isolation. And the fear from being thrown-out of a community breeds authority and rules. Along with that comes tremendous fear. A long time ago in Japan, people who tried to escape their clans were seen as outcasts. Those that did manage to escape left terrible repercussions on their families - in some cases, sacrificing the life of a family member to “save face” (which included seppuku). And for the fleeing member, they lived outside of the community - no support from anyone. The were on their own.
So, have you tried looking at loneliness without the escape? Is it too difficult? Perhaps the sense of loneliness came from your childhood, where your parents might have divorced. Perhaps it came from travelling and moving from city-to-city, not really feeling a connectedness to friends. Most of us are carrying some form of hurt from way-back in our childhoods. And then carry this hurt all throughout our lives which then contributes to our actions in life - the courage to do things or not. You carry the feeling of pain and so you build a cage around yourself to protect you from ever happening again. And from that, you build the potential - the breeding ground for loneliness. For separation from one human to another; from what is.
If you WATCH YOURSELF throughout the day, do you realize how your actions are centered around your self? The thoughts and actions you project are concerned with yourself. You might be volunteering your spare time at the local hospital, caring for patients, or donating some money to charity and dedicate your life to giving to others. But who is operating all of that? Haven’t you identified yourself with something and then going after it? You identify yourself as a teacher, with that comes an image of what an ideal teacher is. Or you identify yourself as a priest and with that comes the image of what an ideal priest is. You identify yourself with a country. You identify yourself with a certain political party. Isn’t this all part of self-centered activity?
If there is self-centered activity, then too must be loneliness. Self-centeredness breeds loneliness because if you are operating out of a “me”, then that “me” is always acting on some image. Today, people’s image of loneliness is a terrible thing and so the “me” respond with entertainment or escape. Perhaps it’s deeper than that. Why do so many marriages start off happily and then end in divorce? Is it because we had an image of what a wonderful married life is and that image didn’t last (because the ego/me is always acting from images) and so divorce. Along with that goes bitter arguing, who gets the kids and all of that. Do you see that as long as you are operating out of an image for which the “me” is deciding all the action, you will have self-centered outcomes. Ambition is another one. Greed. Possessiveness - “my wife”, “my husband”, “my friend”. Along with that goes the potential for loss, aggressiveness, envy, etc. Is this the source of loneliness, then? Is this why we don’t have relationship with the world, with one another, with or place in the world? Can you see this “separateness” that we have created leads to loneliness?
Can we then face loneliness, and vanquish it? Can we “sit” with the loneliness? In other words, can we be completely aware of it without judging that it is a good or bad thing. Can you look at it without the “me” interfering? That is, without any movement of thought deciding what action it needs to take? Just look at it and not escape. No chocolates. No drinks. No movies. No books. No calling anyone. Remain with the feeling of isolation. If you can do this, the feeling of isolation disappears. Because there is now no more thought feeding it any meaning.
You might have also realized that loneliness is completed different from aloneness. What is aloneness, then? Aloneness cannot be the result of any outside phenomena which you have introduced in your life. Your beliefs; your identification with a country: your identification with a particular community or group. It is something completely free from all of that. It is a kind of freedom from knowledge - knowledge being information you have accumulated over time whether from books or schooling. It is a different kind of being. One where you can stand completely free from what everyone else is thinking or doing, without the fear of separation at all. To walk alone is to be able to reach In fact, there comes a deeper sense connectivity without that knowledge. Without the common knowledge that all of us walk around with every day. Those actions are based on thought. The action which I am describing here does not come from there but when thought is completely still, almost lost with what to do, and therefore dormant. Then being alone is the same as ALL-ONE.
Love and light,
G.C.