Facing Aloneness
What emboldens someone to face the unalterable aloneness that will burst several humbling revelations into consciousness? For myself it’s the desire for freedom, happiness and love. Walking the course of love and freedom will bring you to very humbling understandings in the battle for the self.
Working from your ego is unsustainable, only in the desire for love and independence can we survive the journey. There is little strength in the forgetful ego, the ego inhibits the development of gaining wisdom from a experience, you cannot endure from rage or revenge. At night when you are alone, the world seeming to have fallen asleep, constrain your ego through the will of your heart, ask yourself the pre-requisite to all growth. Why do you live? Why do you work? What do you think of those conventional ideas that rule your generation? Do I know myself?
Writing has provided me with the inner conviction to journey deeper inside the root of my pain and believe I can pull wisdom when all hope seems dry. To survive, you need an outlet to relieve your soul of the suffering and gain faith in the inner relatedness of mankind. Through every “suffering” that brought me closer to collapse, writing provided me with a certain strength. Paradoxically revealing to me how lonely and unsafe my existence really is, while also revealing the interconnectedness of everything around me. As Thomas Merton said, “The Duty of our age, the vocation of modern man is to unite them in a supreme humility which will result in a totally self-forgetful creativity and service.” Safety meant nothing to me anymore for life demanded responsibility and an answer.
As Lorraine Hansberry says, “What you Love is eventually what makes you lonely”. Entrenched in life there is no possibility of invulnerability, to love means to exist in a constant state of adaptation, evolution, and attention. Aloneness sparks the fires of enlightenment, the Buddha goes to the forest for seven years and in his contemplation and meditations gains supreme wisdom, King Arthur sat in deep thought next to the forest fountain when the beast appeared, representing the demands of the subconscious mind, telling him to begin the journey. Attempting to depart from your responsibilities will keep you in a stage of infancy, locked in a decrepit self image unable to meet the spirit of another person.
It is not rare for someone to reject the demands brought on by their aloneness, but your response is the beginning of your journey. The releasing of the illusory and temporal connections to mankind, into your true enlightened kindship to the world is a very lonely walk. Modern spiritualist have stripped the term higher self turning it away from its true essence into a floaty, ungrounded state of living, while I believe your higher self represents your ability to say yes to life. Saying yes to everything that life brings and meeting the responsibilities of that moment. This is by no means intended to minimize the strength required to look upon the unrequited loves and losses within your life but knowing those tears to be an opportunity to extract meaning. We live in a world that believes success and prestige will compensate for life being difficult, a world that exerts so much energy to external activity, going inward seems stagnant because you do not get immediate rewards for its doing. We are a people without myths by our side to provide an archetype for the stage of our development.
Our God is profit and the prayers we send are for the acquisition of wealth and power. We are the most independent people in the history of the world, which in turn has only increased the anxiety of our position in the universe. We are being required to create a new set of values, one that refigures our sense of self. The self that comes when sitting uninterrupted by any noise and busyness is the self we must face with courage. This is where your yes to life begins and ends, how you face this silent friend entails the future of our world. Many a thousand have perished from the inability to face themselves and will continue, however the fight must be waged against the person the world says you are and the spirit you truly are. While many have perished from the pressure many more have become some of humanities greatest minds and symbols of persistence and triumph. We can always find our sufferings in the lives of histories greatest minds. We must use them as a reflection for the actualization of our potentialities, finding wisdom from the entirety of their personal story.
You are alone, everyone we have ever known on this planet has existed dandling between two truths. The truth of their connection to the world, as existing interdependent of everyone alive. Then the truth of your unalterable aloneness that requires answers from you every moment it comes around. Getting sucked under in this battle is not a sign of weakness, you need someone to see your tears. We have a responsibility to overcome our aloneness through the embracing and understanding of it’s demands. Moving toward a individual realized self that loves from the affirmation of his own life. A self that thinks independently and freely, is the goal of charting our lonely path.
Let’s keep the fight!
