LONELINESS AND ALONENESS

I am aware that I can be alone, in a place of solitude, and not be lonely.  And, I can be in a crowd of people and feel alone and lonely. I love humanity and I enjoy being with others, however I also treasure my moments of aloneness. When I am in a space of solitude, I am at peace and I enjoy a feeling of fulfillment.

I believe loneliness is a state of being that is a result of separation from Self, which results in being out of touch with our soul and spirit. When we come home to our Self (please note the capital S, which refers to our higher Self), we reconnect with all there is. There is a fullness in being connected to all there is. It is a space where we move beyond the little self. In this place, we can be alone, but not lonely. Our fullness of being no longer comes from a place outside of us. It all abides within. Here, we experience the largeness and expansion of life that we all long for.

When we come to the planet we are in a space of oneness. We are fully connected-body, soul, spirit. Once we take on a physical body and begin the process of enculturation and indoctrination into the life, family, culture and society we are born into, we begin to lose our oneness with all there is, with our essential Self.

We learn to adapt to the norms of our caretakers. We learn to play the game of fitting in. Many parents think their job is to mold a child into what the parent thinks the child should be. It is through this process that we begin to move from the fullness of who we are to becoming that which is acceptable. Most children have no choice but to conform to the norms. Choice is taken away by the threat of being unaccepted, shamed, punished and in some cases, abused. The further we move away from our Self, the lonelier we become and the more time we spend looking for something to fulfill us.

A vacuum has been created where the once complete Self was.  The ultimate result is isolation from Self and a deep longing within for we know not what. If we do not have the understanding of what we are longing for, we usually try to fill that emptiness with stuff outside of our being. We may use shopping, working, sex, entertainment, busyness, religion, drugs or alcohol. In this state of unawareness, we attach ourselves to anything that will help us fill the gaping hole in our being.

I know the process because I lived it most of my life. I tried everything to fill that need. It took years for me to finally realize I was looking for love, acceptance and fulfillment in all the wrong places. That is when I began the journey home to my core which is where all I longed for was tucked away for safe keeping. There I found, not a concept of the divine outside of myself, but the divine herself. My higher Self was within, not up in the clouds, somewhere out of reach. 

It has taken years of chipping away at the hardened surface that kept the authentic me hidden from the surviving me. I have learned to embrace and make room for those parts of me that were banished into darkness, those traits/characteristics/behaviors that were "bad" and unacceptable. I have made space for them in my life and acknowledge their existence. 

I challenge you to love and accept yourself-all of you. The good, the bad and the ugly. Be forgiving and gentle to those hurt parts of yourself. Practice excavating. Dig for gold. Mine for diamonds. Do what it takes to reclaim yourself-all of yourself, not just acceptable parts but the parts that have been orphaned also.