Self-Love
Each of us at some point in your lives would have experienced feeling lonely; that feeling of being completely disconnected from other human beings, a hollowness inside, a bottomless pit of isolation that locks you into a place of introversion within yourself. In addition there may be feelings of anxiety, worthlessness, sadness, fear, hopelessness and if it continues for an extended period of me depression may ensue.
One of the greatest insights about loneliness is that it is an ‘illusion’ created by the mind. It is our mind that conjures up the stories that tell us that we are lonely and that we are lacking something in our life. Why and how does this happen? It starts at a very early age when our minds are conditioned by our parents, teachers, friends, and the society we live in to seek fulfilment from the external world and to project our lacks, such as the need for validation, acknowledgement, love, etc. on to it in search of Fulfilment.
In addition our society and social conditioning has taught our ego to create the illusion of the feeling of separateness and isolation from each other. We are taught in our compeve world to continuously compare ourselves to others. We compete for a..enon, reward, recognition, validation, and success. In pursuit of this we compromise ourselves to achieve these attributes so that we may fit in and become socially acceptable, meanwhile compromising but simultaneously endangering the essence of who we truly are while the void inside gets ever deeper. At the core of this illusion is the fear that one is not good enough, lovable enough, or worthy enough.
According to the Dalai Lama, the aliases under which our feelings of isolation sometimes hide are anger, jealousy, and mistrust, which our mind creates through ‘stories’. The mind spends hours colouring, embellishing and sprinkling glitter on these elaborate stories that keep us trapped in a perpetual cycle of separation if we believe them. These stories need to be discarded.
When you are feeling the void of loneliness, take the step into the void and to understand where this lack of separation comes from. Surrender to the moment and let go of any concept you have about the moment and its interpretation, including the concept of ‘me being alone, of me being lonely, of me not having anybody in my life and simply be there as consciousness. Ask yourself the questions: Who am I? What makes me happy? What are my core values and beliefs? When you ask these questions a sense of ‘who you are will develop’ Take the me to truly respect and love this person for the unique gifts that they bring to this world. In taking the me to find yourself and getting to know who you really are, you will achieve a sense of wholeness and the loneliness will become replaced by self-love.
Use the loneliness and the pain of it to come into the moment and dissolve the personal sense of self. Take courage in remembering that many great philosophers, arts and geniuses through history, those who did not fit in for one reason or another were forced into loneliness and used the vertical thrust of it to achieve great possibilities. Only through surrender and through presence in the moment is it possible to be at ease in loneliness. Understand that it is only a conceptual prison that you are trapped in, and that too, one that can be deconstructed.
