I wasn't looking to make this blog personal, but how could it not be? Everything in life is filtered through my perspective, everything. So no matter what, everything in my life already is personal, and it's also the space in which I am most comfortable – it's the way I naturally experience and live in the world. Thus, anything that comes into that space instantly has the potential to become something I can be comfortable with ... but only as long as I actually deal with it, which is the topic at hand.
A few weeks ago, I spent a couple days checking out Hana, a remote area on Maui that is largely undeveloped, which makes it very beautiful, and very quiet. It's one of many promoted tourist destinations on Maui, since the highway itself is considered part of the attraction; and secondly, the Hana area is inspiring and intense: the gorgeous landscape is imposing and rugged, and the ocean can be quite fierce.
But while I was enjoying the sights and taking scenic pictures along with all the other tourists, I found myself dealing with an annoying and uncomfortable sensation. It was subtle, but constant. I wasn't in pain, I wasn't bored ... I couldn't tell quite what it was, but it was there, poking at me, like the story of the princess and the pea ... just something about my trip that wasn't quite right ... and I eventually realized it was the sensation of being lonely.
Ahhhh .... the dreaded "L" word: Lonely. Nobody likes that feeling. Even when you hear the word, you tend to wince a little inside, either from compassion or pity. Being lonely means feeling left out, forgotten, and at it's worst, meaningless. You feel that no one cares about you, nobody loves you, or even that no one knows you exist.
I have dealt with loneliness many times throughout my life, and here I was, facing it again. I had assumed as a child that once I "grew up", loneliness wouldn't be around, because first of all I'd have a wonderful life full of great friends and a perfect boyfriend/husband and lots of adoration; and secondly, I'd know how to avoid it ... but apparently that's not how it works. Loneliness is not something you can dodge like a pothole in the road, it's a bit more complex than that.
This is one reason why strong and uncomfortable emotions are commonly referred to as our dark or shadow aspects of self, the sides of our personalities that we don't often acknowledge. It is a general habit to move instinctively towards good and pleasant feelings, and avoid the uncomfortable ones, which just means we never get to know them.
But it’s equally hard to deal with them because they don’t always present themselves clearly; they shift and move and slip away while we try to understand what the inner sensations are telling us, and what to do about them.
A common experience with loneliness is the feeling that a void has opened up inside, a pronounced sense of emptiness and loss that is entirely visceral and often accompanied by physical symptoms. Even though emotions are mainly a matter of perspective, the physical reactions are very real, such as the sensation of having lost something tangible, and now there is an empty space that we don't know how to reach.
This is related to our fear of what happens when the "lights" in our lives go out. Have you ever noticed that children are primarily scared of the dark, and not the daylight – how often have you heard of a child scared to play in their room during the day time? But come nightfall, when all the lights are out, a child's imagination can easily take over, creating monsters that come from nowhere.
It is the same with our intense emotional experiences; when a strong and unknown emotion takes over, it has the tendency to stimulate our imagination, and suddenly emotional monsters appear that never existed before.
The truth is, most of us have never gotten over our fear of the dark; what we don't realize it that it is still living inside us, known to us as the pain of loss and confusion. When these emotions surface, we are so unaccustomed to dealing with them that we panic and get lost in the sensations. The world becomes an unfamiliar place, and all we know is that we just don't want to feel that way – we will try to find anything to fill that open and empty space.
The annoying thing about these intense sensations is that they do not go away when we run to various distractions; they just let themselves be covered over and pushed even deeper into us, and then one day when the distractions are gone (or no longer work), we are faced with what has been there all along. Remove the daily comforts, and you'll find your fears, your loneliness, your sadness ... and yet they belong there as much as happiness and joy.
So what do you do when you find yourself in that shadowy realm, despite your best efforts? What happens when depression and discomfort show up in our lives, even though we have been trying our best to stay happy; or rather, to keep our happiness and not let it get it away?
I noticed that when I was feeling my loneliness, there was a knee-jerk reaction to fight against it. Like I said before, it carried the suggestion of blame, the feeling that I had done something wrong, that some sort of mistake on my part had led to this sorry state.
In order to 'fix' myself, I tried various remedies: I tried driving around; I tried hiking and investigating all the beautiful natural sights; I tried running; I tried sitting quietly; I tried listening to good music. Anything that attempts to cover it up is just that: a cover-up. My loneliness kept coming back, like relentless ocean waves meeting the shore - and now that it had surfaced, it wasn't going anywhere.
So, eventually, I choose the one thing left to me: to dive right in. To purposely and willingly go straight into that existential angst, and push myself all the way to the center, so I could maybe learn something and discover what it was made of.
And that's what I did: I looked straight at it, I didn't push it away; instead I went into it. I allowed the sensation of all that loneliness, all that fear and sadness, to wash over me. I opened my heart and my eyes to it, and I stopped trying to pretend it wasn't there or that it shouldn't be there. I welcomed it into my heart.
And a beautiful thing
happened: it went away.
Don't get me wrong: not completely, and not forever. But when I finally stopped trying to figure out what could fill me and take away this sense of incompleteness ... then that very sensation disappeared.
It wasn't instantaneous, and it wasn't earth-shattering. It felt more like an evaporation, like low-lying clouds being burned off by the morning sun. It simply began to grow weaker and weaker, until at last it was no longer the dominant feeling.
It’s a tremendous thing to do, to give your body permission to let go. The physical tension, the emotional tension, even the mental restrictions that tell you to keep away from this dark and terrifying encounter … you just let it all go. And sure, the grief and the sadness that is there can seem overwhelming and all-consuming, as mental and physical sensations that you are not sure you will be able to bear. But unless you try, you might never know how much emotional energy you are capable of holding.
You have to practice letting go,
you have to trust your body and your mind, and allow yourself go into
whatever sensations you need to meet.
You will be surprised to find out what lies inside you, and you will be
amazed at what your body, and your heart, can handle.
There is incredible power found in receptivity, and this is one thing I see
repeated over and over in spiritual texts, that learning to be “passive” or “receptive” in life is the key to finding your strength.
When I let the sensations of loneliness wash over me, and I gave the
wounds and the grief and the tears the permission to be there and be with me … I found a place of stillness that was stronger than anything I had felt before.
I found a level of
acknowledgment inside myself that knew of, and accepted, and loved that empty
and lonely space. I discovered that there is an aspect of myself that is already holding and comforting my fears and my pain; and yet to get there, I had to first convince myself to go past the grief, to go even deeper into the empty sensation.
It seemed that the only way
to access that lovely mothering energy was to allow the pain and the grief to
surface, to feel it so fully that it brought me into contact with another level of
awareness. It was like a beautiful
and holy cave that can only be reached through a dark and water-filled entrance: in order to get to the
inner beauty, I had to go through a full-body immersion of sensation and
feeling. There is no rationalization of
this process, it is simply that you have to relax into the water of your emotions, let them surround and hold you, as you swim through and slowly move towards a calm and safe space.
And that was the very uncomplicated lesson I received from my loneliness: I need to take time to know myself. If I discover and meet and accept every little facet of myself, I will be learning how to take care of myself. And by that I mean specifically: to take care of my own emotional ebb and flow.
By having this kind of intimacy with yourself, and knowing how to honor and respect it, you will find you are building your own stable house within your heart every day, your own safe space. And no one can take that away from you, ever.
Those moments of fulfillment, those moments of bliss? They come and go, come and go ... like the movements of the tide, coming and going in cycles, and never remaining static or fixed. And it's the same with sadness, with fear, with loneliness - nothing will stay with you forever. The more you contact the multitude of emotional expressions you have, the more rich and amazing your experience of life becomes.
So get to know yourself. Get to know what lies inside you; explore and touch on and interact with the sensations that fill you. You won't be disappointed, I promise.
