Loneliness: An Alternative Perspective

Loneliness is not the absence of friends, family, an occupation, or having ‘fun’ events to occupy our time. We can be in the middle of all these and still feel profoundly lonely. This loneliness actually has a spiritual cause. Our separation from our eternal friend, the Paramatma (Lord in our Heart).

This practice offers another way of looking at loneliness through the lens of ancient wisdom, plus
10 minutes of kirtan meditation after the lecture.

Transcript

I look at all the lonely people On the mo,

Bhagavateva su devaya I don't know how many people remember the Beatles song,

All the Lonely People Remember that one?

Oh no,

Just the old dudes Yeah So what is loneliness and what is the remedy?

Was it today they had that wedding thing?

Yesterday,

Okay See how out of touch I am,

I didn't even know what day it was,

Okay Well we had the big wedding and everybody was watching it,

Well not everybody but a lot of people saw pictures and stuff And everybody's feeling like,

Oh my god,

What a wonderfully perfect life This will definitely solve the problem of loneliness But if we think back to,

What's his name,

Harry was it?

Harry?

Not Harry Potter,

Right?

No.

Harry,

We think back to his mother That wasn't that long ago where she was doing the same thing And walking down the aisle everybody was going bonkers like,

Oh this is so beautiful I've never seen anything like this before Like it's such a perfect life that she had,

You know,

Marrying a prince All of this wealth and opulence and beauty and seemed like the perfect husband and everything looks Everybody was saying the same thing for her that they were saying yesterday And how did that one work out?

It didn't take too long before his mom,

Diana,

Was plunged into a deep abyss of loneliness and broken heartedness Which is pretty incredible because you can find yourself in the middle of so much noise and so much activity And friends and family and you can feel even at that point utterly lonely Generally people really have this aversion to loneliness and I'm not saying that that is bad There is a reason that we feel this aversion And so we like to fill our life with noise and clutter and activity So there's just this going up,

Look down here,

You know We just want stuff,

You know,

Like fireworks going off all around us all the time To make it so that our attention is constantly absorbed in things Because we know that if we turn the lights down low and I'm not seeing all of this I too can easily fall into a state of experiencing tremendous loneliness Something that is always associated with loneliness is a feeling of isolation I had a really quite close friend I was actually really good friends with his mother,

A very nice lady who has accomplished yogini in the Philippines And I get this message yesterday that the guy is only like probably late 40s I doubt he's in his early 50s Maybe,

Maybe barely into his 50s And then he suddenly just has this one massive stroke and dies And so I reached out to his wife And I know that she is going to experience something really far out,

Kind of soon I had an auntie and she had quite a long marriage with someone The guy was nice,

But he had a long time relationship with another woman And he would spend half his time with the other woman and half the time with her And she was sort of like quite saddened by that And then similar kind of thing,

He was real fit He was like on the tennis court every couple of days,

You know,

And really going for it Same thing,

He just curled over and died one day And what happens after the burial is all finished and after everything is over with And you go back into your world,

The regular routine of things Then maybe for the first year or so,

You'll be hit with these moments Where you hear a sound or you smell something like coffee in the morning or tea,

Whatever And you'll be suddenly reminded,

That will remind you of this person that you had this connection with And you'll just be plunged into the deepest,

Saddest place and this very lonely place And we all go through it at different points in life Why do we abhor loneliness?

Why do we find it so unpleasant?

It has to do with our spiritual nature It has to do with a very deep spiritual truth It is very much tied to something I mention a lot And that is our natural tendency to want to both love and to be loved And the fact that this is a spiritual desire,

Not a material desire,

Doesn't arise from the body or the mind It is deeply tied to the eternal nature of the soul itself,

The spiritual person You know,

We feel pain as a form of protection I mean,

If you didn't feel pain and you were sitting here and there was a candle here And I had my hand here talking and my finger was in the fire And I couldn't feel anything After a while,

It's going to start,

The fat will start melting I don't know if you've ever seen a body being cremated,

It's really awesome It's a fantastic lesson to watch But it would just start melting and eventually you start catching fire And I would have,

You know,

Way beyond third degree burns The fact that I feel pain instinctively makes it so I can pull my hand away I can remove it from that situation Our feeling of loneliness similarly serves to prod us To prod us,

Prod us,

Prod us to seek What it is that will actually fill up that space What it is that will fill up that hole And it's not something temporary It's not a relationship with a temporary personality,

That's all nice I'm not saying don't do those kind of things But don't have the expectation that this will be perfect It will solve my problem of feeling alone or lonely Or not experiencing intimacy and love and a connection We have an eternal nature Our lives within these bodies,

Within this world These are not eternal things,

These are temporary and passing things And if we seek eternal or permanent solutions in that which is temporary It's not going to work out,

Sorry Sorry,

Not my fault It's just not going to work out very well You know,

There was this thing that people observed With some of the great saintly yogis since time immemorial You had people that could withdraw from society Not that I'm advocating that,

That's not a requirement But they would withdraw from society And they would go through this really intense process A process of seeking who they really were And to come to the platform of actual spiritual realization And part of that process was to become intimately Reconnected with the actual Lord of our own heart He was addressed in Sanskrit as Paramatma Sometimes as Chaitaguru,

Which means guide within Or the supreme soul The Vedas speak about this eternal relationship or connection That we have with this divine personality This place in which we can experience the complete perfection of our desire To love and to be loved And these accomplished yogis could live away from other people And not only not be lonely But to be completely absorbed in the most amazing and intense spiritual relationships With this Lord of their heart Any pangs that we feel about loneliness The pain or our feeling troubled by loneliness We should not seek to just cover up Like sweeping dust under the rug You lift the corner of the mat and just sweep it under And put the mat down and pretend it's not there No,

You can do that in your life You can become so busy and so much going on That you're not paying attention to what you really need And then that time will come where all the busyness Or our focus on one particular person or another will come to an end And when that happens we are again faced with this reality Of this like a hole within our heart And so the solution is not to hide this or to cover it up with noise And clutter and activity or temporary experiences You can do those things,

That's fine But don't use it as a mask And think that you've actually solved a problem And this is a problem When we are not living in harmony with our true spiritual nature We will experience difficulty in life We will experience pain We will experience different forms of suffering And when we live a life that is actually fully in harmony With the highest spiritual truths When we are reconnected with this supreme soul It doesn't matter what else is going on You are unmoved,

You are unfazed And so,

Sorry I'm not the warm fuzzy guy Going to tell you something that is not true What I am telling you is the highest spiritual truth It is the truth propounded in the Vedas It is the truth propounded by the great saintly teachers Of many religions even But it is largely unheard And it is largely out of focus Don't try to cover up loneliness But rather we should try to seek an actual cure We should seek that which will set everything right That will restore the most perfect and beautiful harmony and balance To our life and our experience So I think that's about all I got on that one Everybody is so quiet,

It's like,

Oh my god,

This is serious stuff Was it nice to hear?

Oh no,

It's scary So one of the,

Of course,

Prime ways of making it so that we can have this awakening That we can have these realizations and this profound spiritual experience Is to regularly engage in this process of meditation Where we take our mind,

Our body,

Our self And immerse it in that which is transcendental And what it does is remove the dirt,

The clutter The dust that covers the heart And again makes it so that we can re-engage And experience the truth of real spiritual love So we'll chant,

I'll chant the Might chant the Ma Mantra,

The Hare Krishna Mantra And we might do a little thingy in it where we throw in Hare Bol Nitha Gaur I think quite a few people know this one So hopefully you won't have difficulty with it And if you would like,

You know Don't be stiff Relax If you'd like to stand up And move And clap hands And become,

It is an opportunity,

I mean We only do this like once a week altogether here It is an opportunity to become immersed In this meditative experience Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Nitha Go,

Nitha Go Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Hare Go,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Nitha Go,

Nitha Go,

Hare Go,

Hare Go Hare Krishna,

Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Krishna,

Krishna,

Krishna,

Hare Hare Hare Rama,

Hare Rama,

Rama Rama,

Hare Hare Hare Go

Reviews

Thank you that was really uplifting 🙏

Thank you -Thank you-Thank you 🙏💖🎶

Its soo wonderful to hear your discussions, especially your clear voice, and the simplicity and concise manner u put it across for us Thank u soo much. Ha ha, YES i do remember the Beatles song at the beginning, ironically when i listened to another Talk of yours here on Insight Timer, your Kirtanchanting after,reminded me of the Beatles song, My Sweet Lord , Hare Krishna and then more so after this podcast . It was soo beautiful. I really enjoyed it. If i was there, i certainly would have stood up, clapped & "danced". Your voice & the music are really soothing to the soul. God bless you. Namaste.

Amazing. Loved the talk & the Kirtan was amazing. Do you have it posted anywhere as a separate track ? I’d love to listen & chant to that in the mornings. It made me feel incredibly happy 😃

Very interesting. Thank you 💜 x

Loved it, very uplifting and soo true 🙏