No matter how many friends you have, no matter how large family you have, how many clubs you are a member of and how many people admire you – you are fundamentally alone. You are born alone and you die alone.
This sometimes makes people feel afraid. We do anything to avoid feeling lonely. Anything. But loneliness is not the same as being alone. Being alone is a fact. Loneliness is an experience. Some people experience loneliness when they are alone and others don’t. Some people even experience loneliness when they are with others.
We are alone.
When we dare to face this fact we are free – independent, authentic, spontaneous.
I am alone. I watch life through this body. This body is my instrument of existence. I could not exist without it. Yet I am not this body. I am aware of my existence through the body. There is no other way for me to be aware of my existence.
Yet I don’t own this body. It’s not mine. It’s a body among others. I maintain it but I have no real control over it or over its relations. I might try to control things around it. I might believe that I have control and I might think that it’s my responsibility to control. That always ends in misery.
There are feelings but those are the body’s feelings. There are thoughts but those are the body’s thoughts. The mind is a part of the body. I feel the feelings fully, deeply, helplessly. I watch feelings and thoughts as they come and go. Because that’s what they do. They come and go all the time. It’s no big deal. It’s really no big deal.
The body’s problems are not my problems. I deal with them, though. It has become my job for some reason.
Managing a body and its life is like being a gardener. You sow, you plant, you maintain, you reap. Or rather you watch how things are sown, planted, maintained, reaped, because you are in a natural garden where everything happens spontaneously.
The body’s relationships are not my relationships. I am not in a relationship at all. I am not in relation to anything. The body is. The world is. They interact. I watch.
My memories mean nothing. I am not my past. It can never define me. I once let it define me. But if I let my past define me, or if I let anything define me, I have immediately limited myself. All of a sudden there is a list of what I am and what I am not. With that list comes lists of things that I can do and things that I cannot do, lists of shoulds and shouldn’ts
Then I am imprisoned. Then I have identified with things that don’t really belong to me, things outside myself. I will then be in constant need of those outer things to keep defining me. I will be dependent on them. I will be nothing without them. I won’t know who I am and I will feel confused, afraid – and lonely – without them.
At that point you either revolt or conform deeper to what everyone else is doing. (Because everyone has been taught that this is the correct way to live and we go on teaching it to our kids.)
It’s not until I accept that I am alone that I can be who I really am, at the deepest core. No conflict, no confusion, no struggle exist there. At the deepest core there is only love. When everything has dropped love remains.
Now there is love to be. Now there is freedom to act according to your own nature. Independently, authentically, spontaneously. In the world. Among others. Whether they live from their core or not. You are. You alone are free. We all are.
This sometimes makes people feel afraid. We do anything to avoid feeling lonely. Anything. But loneliness is not the same as being alone. Being alone is a fact. Loneliness is an experience. Some people experience loneliness when they are alone and others don’t. Some people even experience loneliness when they are with others.
We are alone.
When we dare to face this fact we are free – independent, authentic, spontaneous.
I am alone. I watch life through this body. This body is my instrument of existence. I could not exist without it. Yet I am not this body. I am aware of my existence through the body. There is no other way for me to be aware of my existence.
Yet I don’t own this body. It’s not mine. It’s a body among others. I maintain it but I have no real control over it or over its relations. I might try to control things around it. I might believe that I have control and I might think that it’s my responsibility to control. That always ends in misery.
There are feelings but those are the body’s feelings. There are thoughts but those are the body’s thoughts. The mind is a part of the body. I feel the feelings fully, deeply, helplessly. I watch feelings and thoughts as they come and go. Because that’s what they do. They come and go all the time. It’s no big deal. It’s really no big deal.
The body’s problems are not my problems. I deal with them, though. It has become my job for some reason.
Managing a body and its life is like being a gardener. You sow, you plant, you maintain, you reap. Or rather you watch how things are sown, planted, maintained, reaped, because you are in a natural garden where everything happens spontaneously.
The body’s relationships are not my relationships. I am not in a relationship at all. I am not in relation to anything. The body is. The world is. They interact. I watch.
My memories mean nothing. I am not my past. It can never define me. I once let it define me. But if I let my past define me, or if I let anything define me, I have immediately limited myself. All of a sudden there is a list of what I am and what I am not. With that list comes lists of things that I can do and things that I cannot do, lists of shoulds and shouldn’ts
Then I am imprisoned. Then I have identified with things that don’t really belong to me, things outside myself. I will then be in constant need of those outer things to keep defining me. I will be dependent on them. I will be nothing without them. I won’t know who I am and I will feel confused, afraid – and lonely – without them.
At that point you either revolt or conform deeper to what everyone else is doing. (Because everyone has been taught that this is the correct way to live and we go on teaching it to our kids.)
It’s not until I accept that I am alone that I can be who I really am, at the deepest core. No conflict, no confusion, no struggle exist there. At the deepest core there is only love. When everything has dropped love remains.
Now there is love to be. Now there is freedom to act according to your own nature. Independently, authentically, spontaneously. In the world. Among others. Whether they live from their core or not. You are. You alone are free. We all are.
A flower flowers alone. Together with others flowers it creates a lovely garden. Each blossoms at its own time.
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