Mona wrote in the last comments;
Aloneness is ultimate. there is no way to be anything other than alone. One can drown oneself in so many things, but again & again the truth asserts.
It is not the aloneness that creates sadness. It is one's idea that to be alone is to be sad that creates the problem. Aloneness is utterly beautiful because it is s profoundly free.
Aloneness misinterpreted looks like loneliness. In loneliness you go on missing the 'other', the other being any excuse that helps you drown your consciousness, any intoxicant...a man/ woman, a book...anything that helps you to forget yourself, that takes you away from self remembrance.
Aloneness is beautiful. It is when the other is no longer needed, when you are enough unto yourself. You are rich when you are alone, because you are so full & you have so much you can share. But you are poor when you are lonely. A lonely person's heart is a begging bowl.
A lonely person cannot relate because his need is so much. He clings and leans upon the other. He tries to possess the other because he is constantly afraid of desertion. In loneliness the possessing game becomes the biggest problem. Love becomes politics, love becomes domination and exploitation. This is because lonely people cannot love. They have nothing to give & bundled together, they create misery for each other.
Life becomes a bargain then. Relationships become a bargain, a continuous conflict.
Look at the couples who are always fighting each other. They cannot leave each other, & although they go on fighting they cannot leave.In act that is why they are fighting, so that nobody can leave.They cannot be at ease, because if they are at ease they will be at loss, as the other will exploit more.
One wonders why people don't leave each other if they are not happy with each other. They cannot live together, they cannot separate either. In fact the very idea of separation is creating the conflict.They cripple each other so that the other cannot escape even if he wants to escape. they burden each other with such responsibilities, such moralities. That even if the other leaves s/he will feel guilty.His own conscience will hurt & pinch him reminding him that he has done something wrong. And together...all that they do is fight. Together they are haggling for a price continuously. The so called love relationships & marriage today are not love. They are a market place.
October 9, 2007 2:25 PM
And I cannot respond. I at once want to defend my position and just break down and confess at the same exact time. There isn't a thing in this message that I would disagree with. Every concept here is valid, and I thought I aspired to each one. I extolled the virtues of "The Alone Life" once upon a time, and now I'm embarrassed to see how far I've swung from the ideal.
At the moment, it looks like another roadblock to relationship. It feels like being lonely is going to set me and She up for failure. In the past I have run screaming from clingy, interdependent relationships. Now I'm a leech waiting to happen.
That's so not what I want.
I need to "man up". Be the man I want to be before I go begging for love. Get some self-possession and quit whining. But I need a little help. Is this reaction too far of a swing back in the other direction?
"A lonely person's heart is a begging bowl." Haunting.
6 comments:
Dear Alan
Loneliness cannot create love. Love is not a need. Love is a luxury. It comes out of aloneness when you are tremendously alone and happy and joyous and a great energy goes on storing in you. You do not need anybody. In that moment the energy is so much that you would like it to be shared.Then you give, & you give because you have so much, and you give without asking anything in return. That is love.
So very few people attain to love, and those are the people who attain first to aloneness.Then you are immersed in love, which becomes a climate surrounding you and you become suffused with the light; and its freshness keeps welling in you and you start sharing.For what else can you do? When a song is born in your heart you sing it. When love is born in your heart you shower it, unaddressed without any effort on your part.
Trying to escape aloneness you will miss something, because that would be like escaping your innermost treasure.
Drop all fears & drop all memories & go & face your aloneness. Because you have not understood aloneness you go on interpreting it as loneliness.Your whole life is a long processes of feeling lonely. Then by Chance some profound experience happens and because of that you have a glimpse of your being. Yet you interpret it as loneliness as you cannot figure out what it is; it is so new.
The only way to know it to go into it, to be acquainted with it. That is the kind of truth that will set you free, & that is the freedom where love can become possible. After this freedom sharing will happen. After this freedom, your life will have a totally different significance, a totally different splendor to it. Your hidden splendor will be released.
Okay, okay ... dang, Mona! I'm like a baby trying to wolf down a porterhouse here! :-)
To frame this differently, it sounds like you are describing the achievement of self-actualization according to Maslow.
I'm seriously hoping I don't have to get there before I start giving love. I'm pretty sure most of us have not self-actualized--but that might also explain the shoddy state of relationships today.
Back to the drawing board ...
Alan what can I say. My beautiful Mona.
Wow! You're right Alan, that's a tall order! What I personally see, especially in our field is the swing from counter dependence to dependence with a great need for solid individuation. Mona- you are so right on the money. I didn't meet my H until I had resolved that issue and was content to live alone and not lonely. That doesn't mean that I wasn't lonely occasionally and could've used some more people time but ditto, being married doesn't mean that sometimes I give my left arm to have some loneliness! Stop worrying about yourself- you are great the way you are, whatever that may be!
Alan...I have never heard of Maslow
In fact i am not too much into reading stuff...nothing to be proud of really, But as far as Life goes I feel education is something you receive more by learning hands on.
So I got my Phd & shut my books after that!
I do not believe in theories. Theories I feel are closed. I Trust processes more as they are open ended.
You talk about Self Actualizing. Perhaps in a way you are right. We human beings are not born as actualities but as potentialities. We have to struggle hard to become centered beings. So Change is an imminent factor with our lives.
You have to just be Aware & watchful, as to what should be sieved from your living, so that you can drop what is not needful. people go the other way round. They feel that achievement of some kind is Gaining something. I feel That Losing something is a bigger achievement. That way you Lighten your burden by so much.
We tend to Cling. Even when some phase in our life is over, we cling to the remnants of that phase. We do nothing but drag corpses with us.
One theory for another is like shifting the corpses from one shoulder to the other. The burden remains.
Drop clinging... drop the burden...
Dragging corpses. Awesome.
What is your PhD in?
You've caught me in a particularly needy head lately. I couldn't assign you the task of reading up on me, as if you were enrolled in "Alan 101", but suffice it to say that I've been trying to adjust to the idea of being alone for quite a while now. Trying to accept what's in my past and move on.
But I know Yoda. "Do or do not. There is no try."
So I had to admit a little bit ago that I "did not". That I was lonely. I didn't want to ignore the emptiness I felt when My Hero got on his plane and flew away.
Notable is that My Hero got back in touch with me on my birthday and made me feel like a million bucks. It's notable because I realized then that when he left on his plane, he didn't really leave me. He just changed his physical location.
Mona, I get what you're saying. I sometimes feel irresponsible in how much I'm willing to drop and lose so I can be free. It's an actual pattern with me. I've dropped girlfriends the way Fifth Avenue drops last week's style. I've packed up and dropped whole towns and cultures to get free of them. About four times now.
And in my post where I railed against a Someone who hurt me a bit ago, I shouted that I was "Fine before I met" them and I had "NEVER needed" them. I want to believe that is true.
Me in my shell, sufficient without social interruptions.
Mona, it just doesn't feel sufficient. While in this shell, I'm not pursuing An Other. And while in this shell, An Other is not trying to break in to check on me either. People tend to leave isolated people alone. That's why they stay isolated.
And while in this shell, I can't help but bystand the beauty that passes me by. I couldn't help but be illuminated by the brilliance of My Hero's life last weekend, and then I couldn't help but notice how dark it was without his light.
Even now, I can't help but rock back on my heels to read your own emotional clarity and amazing wisdom, and not feel the ache of there not being a "Mona" that I would get to keep.
I can easily turn away from the ideal--from The Other--as I have done so many times before, but it's reallllly hard when the Ideal is staring me right in the blog.
However, I will endeavor to do so. There's a creative wellspring overflowing right now, and I'm giving myself over to it. It will take me out of this funk, the way it has done for the past year (another reason why My Hero is so key in my life).
Indulge me once more, Mona. When I'm back to the place where I enjoy My Aloneness again ... how do I keep from letting My Other pass me by?
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