Working With Loneliness

Loneliness is a universal experience of being human. In this talk and guided practice, we will explore how to work with the experience of loneliness when it arises, and use it to access deeper levels of love, compassion, and wisdom. Loneliness can be a great gift in helping us to find our true nature, humanity, and connection to everything in existence. We are never truly separate, even though we have moments of feeling that we are.
This is a 25-minute talk followed by a 20-minute guided meditation.

Transcript

I had a request to talk about working with loneliness.

Given that we've been in lockdown in the past and we may be going back on lockdown.

Even when we're not on lockdown,

There is a bit of distance that we still have to keep.

We can't have our normal patterns of relating to others.

I'd like to start with a poem from Hafiz,

Who is a Sufi mystic and poet called Absolutely Clear.

Do not surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so tender,

And my need of God absolutely clear.

Loneliness is,

I think it's fair to say,

A universal human experience.

Every single one of us at different times in our lives will experience loneliness.

There is a difference between being alone and being lonely.

Being alone means that we are not around other people,

But we can be alone and still feel connected within ourselves and connected to the world around us.

And likewise,

We can be surrounded by people or family or friends and still feel lonely.

Primarily,

Loneliness is a lack of a felt sense of connection.

In this sense,

It's the flip side of love.

Love is a connection within self and to others and the world around us.

It's a connection that allows us to transcend our mind and our limited sense of self.

When we experience love,

We feel a connection.

When we feel lonely,

We feel an absence of connection.

And it's for this reason that we often associate loneliness with being alone,

With not being connected to others and other people.

But loneliness in this sense is actually a great gift and opportunity.

As Hafiz writes in his poem,

It actually gives us this opportunity to connect to ourselves more deeply,

To open our hearts and to connect to the world around us and realize that we always have this connection present.

It's actually loneliness that has driven a lot of the poets to write some of the most beautiful poetry and for mystics to experience the deep love they have of God,

Of their beloved.

But in order to allow our loneliness to open these avenues of inspiration,

Love,

And ultimately greater connection within ourselves and to others,

We have to sit with it.

Do not surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Often when we feel loneliness,

The desire is to surrender.

We want to get rid of it.

We want to find a way to not have to experience the pain of it.

And so we might seek that through trying to find relationship or through other coping mechanisms that might be less healthy.

But when we do not surrender it so quickly,

When we allow ourselves to be present,

When we allow ourselves to be present to the experience of it,

It actually seasons us.

And it breaks down the walls in our hearts that keep us from realizing that we are always connected.

Ultimately,

We all crave the experience of love.

We all want to be seen and loved by another,

To be accepted fully as we are.

And if we don't have that felt sense of connection,

Of feeling loved,

It can be very difficult.

But it's also an opportunity to realize that we already have this within us.

And ironically,

When we feel lonely and we try to seek the experience of love from another,

Ultimately we can't receive it.

Because we only allow ourselves to receive love from others as much as we have allowed ourselves to experience that love within ourselves,

To love ourselves that much.

It's because of loneliness that we often will worry about losing relationships.

It can bring up great fear if there's a chance of a breakup or a divorce or the loss of a loved one.

Because so often we experience that we are not able to find the right person.

Because so often we experience that sense of connection through the other.

But to truly unconditionally love others,

We have to find that sense of fulfillment within ourselves.

We have to work through the challenge of loneliness.

We have to let it cut more deeply until it breaks open our heart and we feel that deep connection that we always already have within us.

It humbles us.

It softens the ego.

It softens our eyes and our words and how we relate to others.

It's a form of suffering that has the capacity to bring out deeper levels of our humanity,

Of wisdom,

Of compassion,

To see how we all have loneliness.

We all have suffering.

And so it allows us to have greater empathy for others.

There's so many gifts that the experience of loneliness can bring for us if we allow it to.

As I said,

It's one of the main methods that can break down the walls of the heart and help us soften into our true nature.

Which I should say that the experiences that allow us to soften into our true nature are usually not terribly comfortable.

It can be very painful and difficult.

But it's a form of comfort that we all have.

And it's not terribly comfortable.

It can be very painful and difficult because of all of the defense mechanisms and hardening that we've accrued over the years.

But the payoff is worth it because as we face the loneliness,

As we open to experiencing the challenge and suffering therein,

It brings out our innate beauty.

It helps us realize that we are always connected to something greater than our own limited selves.

And it makes us realize how much we need that connection.

And it allows us to give that connection to others in various ways.

We find that we have this incredible well of unconditional love within us that's always right there beneath the surface once we get beyond the fears and the defense mechanisms.

We already have it.

Everything we want,

Everything we need is already right here.

And as we open to that space,

It allows our relationships to become that much more fulfilling because we no longer are trying to use the other person to try to fill that void within us.

You know,

There's the quote from Rumi.

I don't have it on hand right now,

But it's something like,

Your purpose is not to seek for love,

But to seek and remove all the obstacles within yourself that you have built against it.

And often when we're lonely,

We try to seek for love.

But ultimately,

We try to seek for love.

And often when we're lonely,

We try to seek for love.

But ultimately,

That's still a self-centered form of love.

We're trying to find somebody else to make us feel better,

To fill that void of loneliness.

But when we allow ourselves to sit with the loneliness and let it burn through all of that,

Our relationships become so much more fulfilling because we no longer need to get that love from the other person.

And so we no longer have the fear of their absence or them not loving us or them changing in some certain way.

We're able to allow the other to be completely as they are in all their complexity,

In all of their impermanence and changing ways.

And that allows us to be more fulfilled through the context of the relationship.

Loneliness is often in its roots closely related to fear.

We have a fear of not having that connection,

A fear of not being loved,

A fear of being alone.

But the truth is we are never alone.

We are always inherently connected to everything and everyone around us.

And when we do not feel that sense of connection,

When we feel separate or isolated,

That's often an indicator that we have a separation within ourselves.

That we've built walls within ourselves that keep us from experiencing our true nature.

So how do we work with loneliness?

To allow these gifts to come forth that it has to offer us?

The first step,

As I said,

Is to not surrender it so quickly.

There can be a desire when we feel lonely to try to change something in our circumstances,

In ourselves,

In the world around us.

And that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to be more open to the world around us.

And that can be useful at times when we're overwhelmed.

It's perfectly natural and okay when we're on lockdown to want to have connection to others.

And we're so lucky that in modern times with all of our technology,

We have the ability to have these Zoom classes to still stay connected to each other.

We have the ability to Zoom with family and friends and share time and meals together.

And that's a wonderful way to still experience the connection.

But sometimes it's good to allow ourselves to sit with the loneliness,

To feel it and experience it.

This is part of the practice of meditation as well.

Meditation helps us to soften into what we're experiencing,

To be present with whatever is arising as it is,

And to allow it to be as it is without trying to change it.

It helps us cultivate patience.

It helps us cultivate patience with our experience.

And as we allow ourselves to sit with it,

It will naturally break through those walls that we have within.

As I said,

It's not usually going to be comfortable.

It can often be quite painful,

Challenging,

Difficult.

And it's natural to have resistance arise within us.

And with meditative practice,

We can learn to make space for the resistance as well.

To feel the loneliness,

To feel the resistance to it,

To feel the urge and desire to try to change it.

And to realize that we have all of those experiences occurring within us simultaneously.

Another great way to work with it is to spend time in nature.

When we go out into nature and hike or camp and spend time just being immersed amongst the trees,

Rivers,

And lakes.

Even if we are alone,

Without another human near us,

It can be easy to realize that we are not alone.

That there is a way to be alone.

It can be easy to realize that we are not alone.

That there's animals,

That there's trees,

That there is life all around us all the time.

And being in nature helps us to connect to our true nature.

To remember that we are made of love.

And we are expressions of love.

And it's to love that we will return when this physical body passes away.

Nature helps us to accept ourselves as we are in each moment.

In all of our different states,

All of our emotions and thoughts and desires and fears.

It helps us to make space for all of that.

When we walk in the forest and we see all of the trees and some of them might have old scars from elk running on the tree bark.

Or from lightning striking them.

Some of them have straight branches or crooked branches.

And all that we see in each tree is a manifestation of the experiences that that tree has had throughout its life.

And how it's grown and adapted within its environment.

And when we see a tree,

We don't judge the tree.

We don't think that the tree should be different than it is.

Or that its branch should be straight instead of crooked or anything like that.

It's easy to accept nature as it is.

Which in turn can allow us to start to accept ourselves as we are.

With all of our scars,

With all of our fears,

With all of our traumas.

With all of our loneliness.

And that's the ironic thing about being human.

Is that as soon as we accept to,

Sorry,

As soon as we start to accept our experience as it is,

It begins to change.

As soon as we begin to accept ourselves as we are,

We begin to change.

When we let go of resistance,

We change.

It's actually the resistance to our experience or to ourselves as we are that prevents it from changing.

It creates stasis and stagnation.

It concretizes the experience.

When as soon as we soften and relax into the experience of the moment,

It will naturally change.

Because everything is always in movement.

It's always changing.

We are always changing.

The world is always changing.

What often prevents the natural change and development is fighting against it.

And so when we have the experience of loneliness,

Anything we can do to allow ourselves to just simply allow it to be as it is and accept it.

Whether that's through meditative practice or walking in the woods or journaling.

Talking with a friend about it.

Simply allowing it to be as it is will enable the change and the opening within our hearts to find that true nature that we always have within.

You know,

As I said,

Loneliness is very closely related to fear.

And I once had a teacher say that fear is the absence of the presence of God.

The presence of the divine.

So when we feel loneliness,

When we feel fear.

If we can consciously soften into ourselves,

Into the present moment and allow ourselves to experience that felt sense of presence.

Of the divine,

Of God,

Of ourselves as we are in the world as it is.

The fear and loneliness will naturally begin to subside.

And we will experience everything as it is.

The connection that is always present.

And this becomes a gift,

Not just for us,

But for everyone that we love and that we interact with.

Because when we overcome that inner sense of loneliness,

And we do not need to seek love from another,

We do not need anything from anyone else,

Our actions become pure.

They become guided by purity of intent.

Of a desire to be of benefit to others.

To help them to lead from a place of love,

Compassion,

And wisdom.

And in so doing,

Our lives become a blessing to everything and everyone that we interact with.

We become more selfless,

More generous,

More humble.

All of the virtues naturally start to arise and manifest within us and within our words and actions.

As we face and make space for our loneliness.

And just because we may have faced it at one point or several points throughout our lives,

And opened and made space for it,

Doesn't mean that we're done with that.

Being human is a continual journey of growth.

And we always have different stages and phases of learning.

And we're always given greater challenges as we grow.

And so throughout life,

We will always face and have moments and periods of loneliness.

And that doesn't mean that we've done something wrong or that we didn't address it previously or that there's something inherently wrong with us.

It just means that this is the next phase of growth.

The next opportunity for an opening within our hearts.

The next opportunity for a deepening of our capacity for love,

Compassion,

And wisdom.

Living life as a human being is a continual practice.

We don't ever arrive somewhere where suddenly it's done and we don't have to worry about it.

We can just relax and enjoy without a care in the world.

As long as we are alive,

We are growing,

We are changing.

And we always have to be vigilant.

With ourselves,

With our emotions,

With our thoughts.

And the more we gain facility in the practice and the more we grow and develop,

The more vigilant we have to be.

The more we have to practice.

Because the more sensitive and open we become,

The more we have to be.

Because the more sensitive and open we become.

So,

Let us practice.

Last week we talked about love and we did a loving kindness or metta meditation.

And this is also a really good practice for working with loneliness.

So we'll do another variation of that today.

If you will,

Please find a comfortable posture for meditation.

You can be seated or lying down.

If you are seated,

Make sure that you have a stable base.

That your knees are below your hips.

Your torso is rising with the natural curves of the spine up towards heaven.

Relax the shoulders back and down.

And whether you are seated or lying down,

Take a moment to gently scan your body.

And release any unnecessary tension.

Allowing your awareness to soften into the experiences of your body as it is right now.

Become aware of your breath.

Observing the natural flow and movement of the inhalation and exhalation.

Noticing if it's long or short,

Choppy or smooth.

Simply allowing it to be as it is.

As you soften your awareness into observing the breath.

With each inhalation,

Breathe in a felt sense of presence,

Of connection within yourself and to the world around you.

And as you breathe out,

Think the words,

I love you.

Breathing in the felt sense of presence.

Breathing out,

I love you.

Silently on the breath.

And as you breathe in,

I love you.

And as you breathe out,

I love you.

Now,

Bring to mind someone that you love.

See them before you.

Take in their fullness,

Their complexity,

Their past,

Present and future.

All that they have been,

All that they will be,

And all that they are in this moment.

See their hopes and dreams,

Their inner struggles,

Their pain,

Their loneliness.

And as you visualize them,

Continue breathing in felt sense of presence and connection.

And breathing out,

I love you.

Silently on the breath.

Feeling the experience of love within your body,

The sense of connection.

Thank you.

If other thoughts come in,

Gently set them aside and focus your awareness on the experience of love within your being.

Bring to mind another person who you love.

It may be someone who's in your life currently,

Or a former relationship that you don't have currently in your life,

Or someone who has passed away.

And similarly,

See them completely in their complexity.

And breathe in the felt sense of presence.

And breathe out,

I love you.

Silently on the breath.

Thank you.

Now,

Naturally,

With that effort,

Allow other people to arise in your mind.

Seeing members and friends.

And envelope them with this love that you experience.

Seeing them in all of their complexity,

Their pain and sorrow and loneliness,

Their hopes and dreams and beauty,

Unique gifts.

Allowing them to arise one by one within your mind,

Within your being.

Thank you.

If you have not already,

Start to allow people with whom you may have some difficulty or challenge.

People you may not even like.

Allow them to arise within your mind.

See them as human,

As having their own troubles and worries,

And their own unique beauty and gifts.

Allow yourself to envelope them in this experience of love and connection.

Breathing in the felt sense of presence.

Breathing out,

I love you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Now,

Visualize the entire world.

All of the billions of people,

All of the animals and plants and trees,

The rivers and lakes and oceans,

The mountains,

The plains.

And hold the entire world and all of its complexity and paradox with this experience of love.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Focus this awareness,

This love back on yourself.

See yourself in all of your complexity,

All of your pain and suffering and loneliness,

And all of your beauty,

Hopes and dreams,

All of your unique gifts.

Hold yourself with this feeling of love and connection.

Thank you.

Feel the stillness,

Light,

Presence and connection.

And connection within this felt experience of love.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Become aware of the felt sense of your body as a whole.

Feeling the stability beneath you.

Supporting you.

Holding you up.

And the air around you in which you are immersed like a fish in water.

Become aware of your breath.

Observing its natural movement.

And when you are ready,

Maintain a grounding in this presence,

Connection,

Stillness,

And love.

As you gently and slowly begin to open your eyes,

Taking in the world around you.

Letting it flow through you.

Feeling the connection and presence that permeates all time and all space.

Loneliness is a universal experience of being human.

It can feel at times as though it means that there's something wrong with us or with the world.

But it's actually a great gift when we allow it to be.

To help us find deeper and deeper levels of our humanity,

Compassion,

Wisdom,

Love,

And connection that we all have within as part of our true nature.

We are never truly separate,

Even though we might have moments of feeling that we are.

And in those moments,

It's an opportunity to deepen the connection to the love,

To the divine that we have within the courses through us that we are emanations of.

Thank you all for joining me today.

Reviews

Thank you Thomas
I have been feeling a lot of disconnect over the past few months. And feeling alone in my struggle. This talk was very helpful in reminding me that we are all connected to everything. And if I just let the feelings "just be" maybe I will understand that it's just part of my journey. Iam sure I sound a bit mixed up, that's how I feel. I find myself thinking "what is wrong with me?"
Anyway, this talk was just what I needed to hear. Kinda odd that I hadn't listened to it before.
Blessings to you. 🙏☀️
Lucy

Thank you for sharing this deep-dive into loneliness. The discussion and metta practice afterwards were thought provoking and presented in a way that allowed me to create space to better understand and appreciate this feeling as a teaching moment and a moment for personal growth.

My whole heart is smiling. Thank you, Thomas. You are the most gifted and loving Being🌟

Well said... I want to receive the gift of being alone... Someone said... Loneliness is solitude without self care... I want to look after myself. ❤️ 🙏🏻 🍀

another beautiful talk. I appreciate not only your recorded talks but the encouraging words you have shared with me. This loss, this grief is the hardest thing i’ve ever experienced. today is the first time the fear crept in. fear that i can’t do this. even though i am surrounded by supportive family and friends. The loneliness and fear finds its way through the tiny cracks. this talk (and others) gives me hope that I will slowly find my way back to the light

Really good perspective on loneliness. Thank you!

Thank you 🙏💕🙏

Very moving and helpful. Thank you!

It was very good thank you very much for your mindfullness
Thank you for reminding me that it is an universal experience and the gift that loneliness brings
Love the metta meditation also
Much love and light
Heloise from canada

So much wisdom in this one - a real treasure. Thank you.

Dear Thomas , what a wonderful talk! I related so well to all that you said because I do live alone in Miami and it’s not easy being human like you say! It’s a roller coaster of ups and downs sometimes being OK and sometimes just being overwhelmed by loneliness. I was actually kinda unconscious for the last month and finally I am back on the cushion which actually for me I like to lie down to meditate. Your teachings really really do help me a lot. I’m feeling much much better , going out to the ocean again because I was kind of in lockdown that I imposed myself. I even stopped practicing Taii Chi and my ballet classes. Little by little I am moving forward because I try to never give up. Thank you so very much for your incredible wisdom and articulate fine words that you use so well to describe life as it is.💖💖💖💖

Glad I found your teachings and that you are still on Insight Timer. Thank you for this practice!

So good, seeing loneliness as a gift and remembering that it is my opportunity to connect with myself and God. 🥰

I really enjoyed this meditation. It addressed so many of the issues I've been struggling with lately in a new light. A very insightful and contemplative look at loneliness.

Beautiful talk and meditation. A great reminder that we are not separate from others, that we are all connected and can find love within us. Thank you ❤🙏

Thank you so much. We found ourselves lockdown again back here in the Netherlands and I found myself navigating back to your lecture like early this year. Thank you for sharing your wisdom,much needed in this time we are in. Season greetings in advance. and take care 🙏✨✨✨

Nuanced and sensitive, very insightful and incisive, releasing and relieving

Loneliness & Solitude openings to the BeLoved, divine.
In my youth I would always be looking for distractions, now it feels like a luxury to have solitude.
However, I live rurally with my dogs, at times the sharing of meals feels like I’m missing out, as friends who have close families and children living nearby are always together. I also Know that what I’m ‘Comparing’ in my mind is often not reality.