Loneliness

Loneliness is not something we need to be trapped in.  At times we all feel isolated, not understood or that nobody cares, even if we are with loved ones.  By understanding what causes loneliness we can be masters over this condition.

Signs of Loneliness

Symptoms of loneliness are a deadening of drive and vitality, a yearning for companionship, a willingness to burden ourselves with commitment just for the sake of companionship. Sometimes our minds dwell on the subject of relationship or marriage. In extreme cases of loneliness we may experience other forms of self-abuse such as drug addiction, attitudes of self-hatred, depression, sickness, thoughts of suicide and even death.

The seeking or hoping for marriage, companionship, commitment, relationship, community, family, and fellowship can all be products of the fear of loneliness.  For loneliness is a sense of incompleteness and we believe that someone else will fulfill that incompleteness.

When we get lazy we cease our aspiration to explore, investigate and learn.  We become narrow minded and hard hearted.  We stop expanding or growing and we start to contract and die.  It is the contracting down that creates the tension and the uncomfortable feeling that is the pain and negativity that we associate with loneliness.

Cause of Loneliness

Insensitivity

Loneliness is a product of insensitivity, a sign that we have cut off our awareness of our feelings and emotions.  Loneliness can only be a product of not caring about other people, an inability to feel compassion, or a fear of being trapped in suffering of others.

To be free of loneliness one only has to think on, and eventually feel, the suffering of others.  Allow yourselves to feel their discomfort.  Look at your sameness with others.  Being still and feeling what is to be felt develops sensitivity.

Lack of Stimulation

Loneliness is an emotional response to the absence of physical stimuli.  It is a product of the deadening of the senses.  When there are other people around that interest you then you are stimulated to seek to understand them.  The seeking expands your alertness and sensitivity until your thoughts and emotions harmonize with others.  Not just any type of stimulation will release you of your loneliness.  It is the stimulation that motivate you to feel sympathy and compassion that expands your sensitivity and awareness.

When we become concerned, sensitive, empathic and compassionate with others we will feel connected to them, we will experience ourselves as part of them.

When we gain a certain amount of worldly success the first thing we seek is physical comfort.  Comfort is a relief from stimulation. When we are comfortable there is no longer a motivation to seek, learn and grow.  Our soul still yearns to explore but our body is no longer motivated.  There is a time for comfort and rest and a time for stimulation.  If you are feeling lonely it is a time for stimulation.

Fear

Loneliness is a painful or negative experience.  Any pain is simply a call to awaken ourselves.  If we feel trapped in the pain of loneliness the fear of that entrapment will only enhance the pain.  Understanding what causes loneliness and how to get out of it releases us from that fear.

Lack of Interest in Growing or Learning

Loneliness is Natures way of telling us that we have stopped yearning to grow and learn.  Life is growth; as we learn we grow. When we lose or forget the habit of asking and seeking, we no longer seek to understand the world, and ourselves we become narrow minded.  With the coming of narrow mindedness comes the beginning of death.  We begin to constrict and shrink. 

As a plant grows it reaches outward toward the sun's light.  As we grow we reach outward toward the light of sensitivity and experience.  As a plant dies it is drawn toward the earth, it falls down.  As we begin to die we are drawn to the world and material things.

The habit of focusing our attention onto material things creates a narrowing of awareness and a sense of isolation and loneliness. Material things are inanimate objects (including thoughts and ideas.)

The power of inertia and gravity, the heaviness of materialism, make us heavy and destroys our will to explore life.  It destroys the spirit within us that motivates us to ask, seek and knock.

Attitude of Uniqueness

To focus on our uniqueness narrows our awareness, isolates us, makes us feel small, lonely, separated.  When our mind focuses on our uniqueness, separateness or difference we will feel separate and alone. When our mind focuses on our sameness we will feel connected and unified with others.  When you feel connected you cannot feel loneliness.

There is a time for uniqueness and there is a time for sameness.  Your uniqueness, your individuality, will always be there, but the more you focus on it the more isolated and alone you will feel.  To get to know the form, the instrument, is to get to know your uniqueness. To get to know the substance, the essence, is to know your sameness with all humans, with all life. 

False Solution

We can temporarily distract ourselves with relationships, marriage, busyness and activities, but the pain of loneliness and insensitivity will return.

If we have painful experience we can mask the pain with drugs or other tools to make us insensitive to the pain.  Commitment, relation-ships, marriage, joining groups and organizations, these are all, at best, just primitive methods of overcoming the discomfort of loneliness.  They do not address the root of the discomfort.  They do not motivate a person to expand, grow and be fully alive.  Relationships do give us an opportunity to be close enough to people to find our sameness and to share in the pain and joy.  But relationship that is not expanding or growing is a dead relationship and will only return to loneliness.

Benefits of Loneliness

The pain of loneliness is beneficial to our lives.  When we learn power over loneliness we can use it to motivate us to seek to share the joy with other people.  With the understanding of what is going on in our being, we can either be free of the longing or we can allow it to motivate us. 

The discomfort motivates us to seek out the company and experience of others.  Yet if we feel trapped in our discomfort or our need for others then we lose the spirit of joy and love.  We can be free of loneliness just by sharing the suffering of others.  This compassion enriches our life.

Summary

As I sit here many miles away from anyone and write these words I consciously expand my awareness and feel the hearts of those who suffer from loneliness.  In so doing I feel connected to them.  It is not necessarily a concrete sensation that I experience, but the effect of expanding my awareness that releases my tension and opens me to their pain.  With this compassion there is no sense of the heart-felt pain of loneliness or isolation.

Loneliness is a sign that we are looking for a connection with the life around us.  We want to expand our feeling, awareness and sensitivity.  We want to use the other life forms around us to experience more of life.  Compassion and sympathy allow us to harmonize our feelings and emotions with those of others. 

What you give you get.  What you practice is what you experience.  If you seek to be understood you will always feel lonely and isolated.  If you seek to understand then you will realize that you do not need to be understood.  Seek first to understand and then you will be understood.  If you seek to care then you will feel the caring of others. You are the first person to feel and benefit from your compassion or sympathy.  The measure you give is the measure you shall receive. 

Reach out with your heart and you will never be trapped in loneliness again.