When we are alone and suffer from no one being here, we feel lonely. We feel a neediness inside of us which seems to say to us, that we are incomplete when there is no one else present. Being alone in the strict sense of the absence of other people can be a source of self discovery and inspiration. The German theologist Paul Tillich has written: “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
Eventually any kind of loneliness is an illusion, a drama produced by our body-mind. It comes up when the mind gains power over our consciousness. When we are not dominated by thinking, we do not even consider the idea that something could be missed. We can feel needs coming from our bodies but they disappear as soon as they are nourished. Thinking produces expectations and reproduces disappointments. This is the source of the nagging feeling of loneliness.
The specific pain which can arise in being alone stems from a situation of abandonment or neglect in our childhood. The younger a child is the more it is in need of the steady and reliable closeness of a grownup person. When this is missing, fears of existence can arise. In addition to this, that traumatizations can happen during pregnancy like not being wanted as a child or suffering from an attempted abortion. Also dramatic experiences in the life of the mother can severely affect the unborn child and leave a deep wound which gets activated after birth when close and loving contact is missing.
Being alone strengthens the connection to oneself and can be used as a recreation from abundant or strenuous social contacts. In being alone, we notice mor about ourselves, we feel what is right for us and which direction of our lives and our activities fit to who we are. It is easy to lose ourselves in the net of communication and become untrue to ourselves by meeting the needs and expectations of others.
Yet when we get uneasy and restless when being alone and when we suffer from the absence of people, we are caught in our patterns. Enforced by thoughts, we are directed by unresolved feelings from our past.
In a deeper sense we know: We are always in connection. Simply by breathing we are in a constant exchange with our surrounding, simply by looking around, we take in new impressions, simply by listening, sounds come in and change us. Maybe the singing birds are talking to us, maybe the blossoming tree tells us that it likes being looked at?
People living in a tribal consciousness did not need a word for loneliness as there is no reality fort hat. When someone was expelled from the tribe and so also from tribal consciousness, this meant radical solitude and was equalled with a death penalty. Only by collectively transcending the tribal connections, feelings of longing and loneliness arise. Today, as we are no longer depended on certain forms of social organisation for survival, being alone should not be an emotional burden, except, as said, when nourished by former harm.
The power and creativity which can be found in a deep encounter with another person, is an important reassurance of the connectedness which is there all the time. We can practise it for instance in exercises like eye contact breathing. Being seen by someone else is an important source of inner opening and can overwrite old experiences of abandonment and ignorance. Seeing another person can lead out of the limitations of the own personality and open towards a broader sense of humanity.
Still we have to be careful not to get lost in such an encounter as we tend to fall into the trap of loneliness as soon as this person leaves. Possibly we tend to idealise persons with whom we have such deep encounters and openings and get dependent on them. Then it can happen that we are easily disappointed when the same depth of communication does not work any more and that we accuse the other person for that. This means we get trapped in an unconscious dependency.
So a wide inner clarity, openness and maturity is needed for entering a relationship in which we are willing to acknowledge the divinity in the other person. We have entered the holistic or universalistic level of consciousness: We let go of all masks and strive towards the inner core of being which radiates unharmed beauty. In this pure core, there is no more essential difference between I and You.
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
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