What is that which hurts me when I try to leave behind my lonliness and painful memories?
Answers
Explanation:
Loneliness is a conditional state, it is not the same as being alone. Being alone is the only truth in existence and there’s actually great power in it. A tree is alone, a dog is alone, the Sun is alone, the universe itself is alone. Your subjective experience of life is only experienced by you, so you are alone. It is the only truth.
Even in the presence of other people you can still feel loneliness. So it is not that you are physically alone, it is because you are seeking happiness, and in order for you to feel happy, you’ve placed a self-imposed condition in order to experience it, otherwise you will experience unhappiness, which is where you are mistaking the feeling of loneliness with unhappiness.
So when you create happiness, you also create unhappiness. You cannot know one state without the other state and both are conditions. These certain conditions lead to happiness for you, if they are not met, your mind will lead you to unhappiness. So what is happiness and unhappiness, it is the desire to want your reality to be different from what it actually is.
Some say that if you do not desire, you will be free. This is false. To reject desire, is still a desire to reject and because you create one desire, the other opposite must be known as well and that is why loneliness can feel like a circle with no way out.
So the solution is not rejecting desire, and not wanting to desire. There is a root to desire, and that is the simple act of ‘want’.
Answer:
The Pain of Loneliness
Loneliness is the leading reason people seek out therapy and one study suggests that loneliness is a risk factor for mortality. As I have written about in previous posts, social connection is critical to our health and well-being as is vulnerability, an essential ingredient to intimacy.
We thrive in community, in connection, in giving and receiving love. In a survey I conducted with Stanford students, when I asked what single activity brought them the greatest fulfillment, the most commonly given answer was spending time with friends and loved ones. It is not surprising that loneliness hurts. A brain imaging study showed that feeling ostracized actually activates our neural pain matrix. In fact, several studies show that ostracizing others hurts us as much as being ostracized ourselves. We can hypothesize that, similarly, loneliness is associated with the pain matrix.
From one perspective, we are all fundamentally alone. We come into the world alone and we leave it alone. We are all independent entities with thoughts, feelings and emotions that no one else can fully understand or experience no matter how numerous our friends. On the other hand we are always completely interconnected no matter how few our friends. We are connected to millions of people all over the world through the intricate web of economic and social relationships that bring food to our table, clothes on our bodies. We are literally connected to every other human being who shares this same ecosphere with us simply by the air we breathe. We are in touch with every other person and animal on the planet by the ground we walk on. We are both alone and deeply connected.
When the pain of loneliness takes hold of you, here are some tools that can help build resilience.