Chapter 11 Loneliness is an act of self-enclosure

What a strange and frightening thing loneliness is! We never allow ourselves to get too close to it.If approached by accident, we also quickly run away from it.We do everything we can to escape loneliness, or to cover it up.Our conscious and unconscious preconceptions seem to avoid it or overcome it. Her son recently passed away and she said she didn't know what to do.She had so much time, she was so bored and tired and sad, she was ready to die.She had raised him with love and wisdom, and he had gone to the best schools and universities.While he has everything he needs, she doesn't spoil him.She placed her confidence and hope in him, and gave him all her love, for she and her husband had been separated for so long because they had no one else to share with.Her son died as a result of some wrong diagnoses and surgeries — though, she said with a smile, those doctors said the surgeries were "successful."Now, she is alone, and life seems empty and meaningless.When he died, she had cried until there were no more tears but a numb and weary emptiness.She used to have a plan for two people, but now, she is completely lost.

The breeze from the ocean was cool and refreshing, and there was silence under the trees.The mountains are alive and the blue birds are very noisy.A cow wanders by, followed by a calf.The squirrel rushed up the trunk and chattered wildly, sitting on the branch and chattering for a long time, wagging its tail sideways.Its eyes are so bright and its claws are so sharp.A lizard crawls out to keep warm, and it catches a fly.The treetops were shaking gently, and a dead tree stood upright and magnificent against the sky.It was bleached by the sun.Next to it was a dead tree, black and twisted, that had only recently begun to rot.A few clouds are resting on the distant mountains.

What a strange and frightening thing loneliness is! We never allow ourselves to get too close to it.If approached by accident, we also quickly run away from it.We do everything we can to escape loneliness, or to cover it up.Our conscious and unconscious preconceptions seem to avoid it or overcome it.It is useless to escape or overcome loneliness, repress or ignore the pain and the problem remains.You may lose yourself in a crowd and be utterly alone; you may be active, but loneliness creeps up on you quietly; put down the book, and it's still there.Recreation and drinking don't drown loneliness, you can escape it for a while, but when the effects of laughter and alcohol wear off, the fear of loneliness returns.You may be ambitious and successful, you may be capable, you may be very knowledgeable, you may attend church and forget yourself in long rituals; but do what you want, and the pangs of loneliness remain.You may exist only for your son, for the master, for the display of your talents; but loneliness envelops you like night.You may love or hate people, escape according to your temperament and psychological needs; but the loneliness is still there, waiting, withdrawing to get closer again.

Loneliness is awareness of utter isolation, isn't it an act of self-enclosure? While our thoughts and emotions are vast, aren't they unique and divisive? We don't seek mastery in our relationships, rights, and possessions Do we not see our work as "yours" or "mine"? Don't we identify with groups, nations, or minorities? Isn't all the tendency to separate and divide ourselves? Whether in What level, the real activity of the self is isolation, and loneliness is the awareness of the self without activity.Activity, whether physical or mental, becomes a means of self-expansion; and when there is no activity, the self has a feeling of emptiness.It is this emptiness that seeks to be fulfilled, whether it is on a high or low level, and we fill it with our lives.On a noble level, there seems to be no social harm in satisfying the void; but fantasy begets unspeakable sorrow and destruction, perhaps not immediately.Desire to fill this emptiness - the same thing as escape from it - it cannot be sublimated or repressed, and who is the entity that suppresses or sublimates? Isn't this entity another form of longing? The object of longing may Change, but aren't all cravings alike? You can change the object of your craving, from drinking to conception, but without understanding the process of craving, fantasy cannot be avoided.

There is no separation of entity from desire, there is only desire, and there is no person who desires.Desire takes on different masks at different times, according to its interests.When this memory of diverse interests encounters something new, it conflicts, and the selector emerges, shaping itself as a separate and distinct entity from the longing.But this entity is not different from its qualities.This entity is trying to fulfill or escape from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, as much as he wants to avoid, he is it.He cannot escape from himself, all he can do is to know himself.He is his loneliness, his emptiness, and as long as he sees it as something separate from himself, he is immersed in phantoms and endless conflicts.Freedom from fear comes when he directly experiences his own loneliness.Fear exists only in relation to ideas, and ideas are responses to memory.Thought is the result of experience, and although it can think about emptiness and feel it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word "loneliness", accompanied by memories of pain and fear, prevents one from re-experiencing it.Words are memories, and when words are no longer important, the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is completely different.This relationship is direct, not through words or memory.But the experiencer is the experience, and in this way there is freedom from fear.

Love and emptiness are incompatible, and when you feel lonely, there is no love.You can hide emptiness under the word "love," but when the object of your love isn't there or responds, you know what emptiness is, and you feel frustrated.We use the word "love" as a means of escaping from ourselves, from our own poverty.We cling to a loved one, we get jealous, we miss him when he's gone or dead; then we look for some other form of comfort, some belief, some substitute.Are these loves? Love is not an idea, not the result of associations; love is not something that is used as an escape from misfortune, and when we use it we create problems that cannot be solved.Love is not abstract, it can only be experienced when the idea, the heart, is no longer important.

Loneliness Excerpt from "Survival First Series"