My ego/mind is going nuts without loneliness. I hear:
- How will I know I’m alive if I don’t feel pain? Surely I’ll blend in with the wallpaper.
- Pain is the cost of feeling alive.
- Nothing lasts. We lose in the end. Everything ends in goodbye.
- You can’t trust anyone. You can’t rely on anyone. You have to rely on yourself.
The inner messages come pouring in, in favor of keeping loneliness in place.
Loneliness became an identity for me probably when Dad “left” me – emotionally – at a very early age – when he first shouted at me or slapped me or shook me back and forth, and couldn’t handle the guilt and disappointment with himself. So he “left.” Or so it seemed to a very young mind.
Loneliness then became a constant friend and I had to rationalize its presence and my preference for it. These (above) were my rationales, which now come to the aid of the preservation of loneliness.
I thought Maria Erving described the process very well. (1) I recognized myself in what she wrote.
I know I court loneliness by courting solitude. But I keep doing it. I don’t change.
Well, I do know why. Being a writer requires a great deal of solitude, I find. Loneliness is an occupational hazard that I accepted decades ago. It’s only one of many similarly-unwanted conditions.
I imagine all unwanted conditions and painful circumstances could be looked at as identities or constructed selves, formed at a very early age, which now are comfortable and familiar. And so we continue using them without questioning.
Nevertheless, who I am at the very deepest levels has nothing to do with loneliness or hatred, resentment, jealousy, or any of the other painful and unwanted conditions left over from childhood (“core wounds,” Mateo Sol called them). (2)
The Self, that “resides” in the heart – and this applies to all of us – is innocent and pure, natural and sweet. These painful feelings sit on top of it, so to speak. (3) They’re like overburden. And that’s all that sits on top of the Self. (4).
Psssst! Promise you won’t tell anyone? OK. There’s no original sin. There’s only original innocence.
I no longer believe that all the vasanas have to go before we go inward. Enough have to go that we’re in charge of ourselves; we have ourselves in hand. Then we can begin the journey.
Here’s what I recommend from experience.
Use whatever means you know of to clear away the rubble from your past. Don’t be dragging around Morley’s chain. However you do it is fine. You need to reach a point where you feel you have room to breathe from your vasanas or core wounds, some degree of distance, a little sunshine through the clouds.
Then dive deep into the heart with your awareness, using any kind of visualization that you can – diver, elevator, inner spaceship. If you have breathing room from your vasanas, your progress should be smooth and easy; if you don’t, then it can be like moving through molasses.
Go below the vasanas, just as you would go down a very long elevator. The vasanas are on the 30th floor and you’re already well beyond that.
Then begin by every visualization possible, to continue into the extreme depths of the heart. As Ramakrishna said, the only thing you need to remember – and do – is: Go deeper. Go deeper. Go deeper. You will be led to your destination. And you will know it.
Getting underneath what the Buddha called “the obfuscations” (the vasanas) and realizing the Self will elevate the mood of the planet, I think, contributing enormously to Gaia’s Ascension, as Sanat Kumara once reported: “The limitation of core issues, the expansion into love – all of this is changing the world that you live in.” (5)
Footnotes
(1) “Maria Erving: Falling Back Into Duality (Spiritual Awakening Process),” https://goldenageofgaia.com/?p=296539
(2) “Mateo Sol: How to Discover Your Deepest, Darkest ‘Core Wound,'”
(3) One can only describe the situation metaphorically.
(4) Everything is so complicated. But we mustn’t overlook the fact that that overburden resides on several levels: It resides as thoughts, feelings, conclusions, decisions, and reinforcement (Remember not to do this; remember to do that, etc.). It isn’t a case of handling only the ideas; there may be residual feelings and core issues.
(5) “Transcript: Sanat Kumara ~ Ascension: Your New Tomorrow, Right Now ~ September 17, 2015,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2015/09/20/transcript-sanat-kumara-ascension-your-new-tomorrow-right-now-sept-17-2015/.