By Christopher Walker Sitting on top of the world, looking across the vast expanse of this earth and this universe, it is possible to feel the beauty and ultimate emptiness of our existence here on earth. Emptiness. It means without meaning, insignificant, without need or the hope of have a need met. Sitting on top of one of these mountains and looking beyond we know that we are a part of something far greater that the little worlds we call our own. The most immediate experience one can have amongst these great mountains is the feeling that we are alone. Yes, there are people, other trekkers, Sherpa villages, friends, but we are far from the phone, far from our normal disturbances. The silence of the moment spreads to the hour, to the afternoon and then the night. We know we are alone. Every breath is important and our bank account is not. We are responsible for everything, every thought is ours. There is no media, There is no telephone, few internet hidouts to connect us to the world we know. We are alone and for, possible once in our lives, unable to escape it. But we try. We befriend, we chatter, we bring our books and magazines to the mountains to distract us. Yet, time is our enemy. We have no escape, there are just so many books and distractions before the reality holds, we are alone. And lonely. The shock is a wonder. Our reactions bemusing. Regrets, truths, feelings we never understood, dreams we denied, hopes that had faded, wounds than needed healing, heal, we are in the mountains, sacred mountains and our lives will never be the same. How long can you sit and stare at the stars without talking, or thinking while in the city? Here the spirit of the mountains makes it easy. You sit and you sit and you sit and you just cant believe it. You are alive, for no real reason, with no real desire to change it. And in this emptiness, this loneliness you learn something about yourself that is a great and personal gift. You understand the word, spirit. Alone up here, it is lonely. But here, it is mean to be lonely. You are meant to feel isolated from your mind and its every striving desires, wants and needs. Here you get to know what lonliness could teach you back in the city life, but were unable to hear. You learn the meaning of silence, emptiness and therefore the deep awareness of inspiration and love. loneliness comes from the lack of self love. When we are in situations or circumstances that confront our self perception, we feel loveless, and then seek it. We seek love from others when we feel unworthy of love for ourselves. That is a strange situation. When we are at our worst, we seek the best. The more we hunger for love the more we lack self love. We can safely say that most mental health problems, sadness, loneliness evolves from the lack of self love and therefore most behavior we exhibit, which is not loving, is attention seeking. We seek attention because we lack worth. That attention seeking is a cruel friend. Because we may dress strangely, act strangely, be ill, seek help, be depressed and many other things but really what we are saying is I dont love who I am If we are saying this, I dont love who I am how can we be loved. Only when we love who we are can we say I feel you love and welcome it, I accept that it is valid But most of us dont know how to self love. We say I am worthy of love because I am clever, or because I am a great performer, or because I am ill and everyone give me attention for my misery There are many confusions around lost self love. Attachment to people and things exacerbates the lack of self love. We substitute a thing for a way of being. Things are not bad in themselves, but our use of them make them corrupt. I might wear Gucci sun glasses and say hey look at me I am cool and from the develop some worth for love. But what happens when I take them off. It is the same for women with those boots that come up to the knees and with high heels. They feel so sexy with their jeans tucked into those boots and this is nice. But what about tomorrow, after that sexiness wears right off and they wake up with a headache and wondering what made them make foolish choices. Loneliness is not an evil thing if we can dive into it and find a way of valuing it. For example we might be sitting at home and lonely and want to eat food, turn on the TV or even find a partner for sex. There are so many ways we can run away from loneliness, we can even email a friend and tell them about our unhappiness. But really there is no escape. Those things are just jumping from one problem to the next, and talking about our problems with friends makes those problems legitimate. Loneliness must be embraced as a time for self loving. It is a time to ask ourselves what are we doing that we hate. Like are we lying. Are we running away. Are we attached to an ex person who keeps us lingering in the past? There are so many questions about this and to avoid loneliness, is to avoid the journey of spirituality. Most of our loneliness is triggered by the desire to be exclusive. To own everything including our partner. We want exclusive control over all our possessions and therefore we create a withdrawal from life. WE build up this arsenal of things, objects people, family and guarantee we are not lonely by building this wall around ourselves. Walls are created to protect us, to prevent vulnerability. Instead they block the most critical thing we have, the ability to love. Now I am not advocating open door relationships. No, I am simply saying that love must ride up and over the fears we have. Then, we can acknowledge the beauty of life rather than remember it. Rather than remembering what was we can enjoy what is and what can be. Holding onto the past means wanting things to be like that. We glimpse a moment of beauty, then remember it, then regret that the current situation is not up to that one. Have you ever been with someone and shown them around your city for the first time.? They typically say oh that looks just like Mexico, or that looks like Boston or London or some other place. They are comparing everything to some memory. Then life has become a routine of repetition and safety. A pattern of life looking for routines and old ways, they wish things wouldnt change. A rainy day is bad, because they compare it to yesterday when the sun was out. But the rainy day can be just as wonderful and beneficial to them. It is the same with self love. We get attached to who we were, who we thought we could be, who we thing we are and who we want others to think we are. We compare ourselves to our ideals and even worse, to others. Then the whole of life become attentions seeking. We cant rest in the arms of our loved one without comparing how it was or could be. There is no innocence. There is a great opportunity to open ourselves to a completely different way. The key to that way is happiness. Happiness means an inner contentment with how things are. In understanding this we must differentiate between pleasure and happiness. Moments of happiness can be found in pleasure, but happiness cannot. That person who confuses pleasure and happiness will make many, many mistakes in their life. They cant even differentiate between real friendship and false, because even false friendship can result in pleasure,. One of the greatest pleasures people seek is attention. So a friend who gives the pleasure seeker attention, approval or holds them in high regard can easily become attractive to the pleasure seeker who thinks this will bring happiness. But attention just creates misery. You must know this if there is anything you can learn from understanding the natural way of life, that pleasure and happiness are completely in conflict with each other. Pleasure comes from the mind. There is no fixed definition of it. So what causes pain to one person might be pleasure to another. That is a very challenging reality. WE could go on forever about pleasures. It is a pleasure to blame people for your problems. It can be a pleasure to be always right. It is certainly a pleasure to think that you can be close to some ideal of a God. It is a pleasure to believe you are attractive. So anyone who validates those states of mind can give you pleasure. That is a really dangerous thing, because really what you want is happiness. Yes, you think that it is pleasure you are searching for but one day, you experience a silence, an inner happiness, you might just find yourself in true love and then those pleasures become confusing If you really experience contentment, then pleasures become very boring. Yes, there are moments when pleasures are high but the downs are equally low. Nobody wants the lows, they want the highs and this is the problem isnt it. So, when you look at a beautiful face are you experiencing happiness or pleasure? Or when the sun sets and you see that magnificent closure to a day, is that happiness or pleasure? The mind will call those things pleasure because it can compare them to displeasure. So the mind will say compared to yesterday, this sunset is amazing, and therefore I have pleasure That is why pleasure seekers are often depressed and feeling sorry for themselves, because every pleasure they get, they are reminded of a displeasure they had, they are always comparing today with something. Happiness on the other hand comes simply. It is like surrender. You give up and then that beautiful face or that amazing sunset just comes in. There is no thinking involved because there is no ambition. Ambition, striving, wanting they are the cornerstones of the pleasure seekers life. But the person who has happiness does not want the sunset to be good or the face to be beautiful. Beauty and goodness is already there, and the sunset or the face just reminds them of it. The spiritual path is happiness. The religious path is pleasure. On the spiritual side there is a lack of expectation, moreover there is a contentment with what is and a awareness of the guidance of greater forces. The mind, in spiritual practice is considered a wild horse with very little going for it, in terms of the quest for happiness. The mind is a pleasure seeking animal and in spiritual practice our aim is to tame this animal, teach it to focus on itself, or on objects of choice. The mind, in spiritual practice is slave, not the master. But the average person will see the mind differently. The mind wants to run away from loneliness, it wants to be reinforced and proven right. It wants to give care and control to those it loves and in seeing them benefit, derive pleasure. The mind is the parents choices around bringing their children up the best they can, the parent does what they do because the mind, with all its ups and downs calls this love. Happiness is different to pleasure. Pleasure is the avoidance of loneliness and therefore the wanting that comes from the mind. We want anything that takes us from the emptiness of being ourselves. So anything that achieves that aim, is attractive. Learning how to be lonely and happy. Loneliness can be a wonderfully happy experience as long as we are not resenting it. When I am lonely and dont want to be lonely, then I am in pain. I run for ways to escape it, alcohol, TV, my Ipod, any thing. I can even create unwellness which draws toward me those who love to love the needy. I have one friend like that. She is unable to enjoy my spirit and inspiration, yet, when I am ill she is the first one there. I wonder at much of our need for therapy, self help and advice from professionals, whether it is really attention seeking, just because we are lonely. Loneliness can drive people to depression and bulimia, to hyperactivity and performance. One lady I worked with was obsessed with getting men to seduce her, her escape from loneliness lasted no longer than the fleeting moments of approval before she would find a good reason to negate the person who approved of her. Then, she would return to me seeking help. Loneliness can be fun. When I am lonely I dive into it. I dont try to replace it. I might go to the art gallery and just feel the loneliness of the artist. I might write poetry or take my sea kayak out to a remote place and make a picnic. The whole idea of loneliness is that we dont like our own company so we create diversions. Because of those diversions we never get to experience our spirit. Our spirit, our self love, sits below the surface of everyday life. That is why people stay active, to avoid their spirit, they just dont like themselves enough. Loneliness does not mean being alone. Some days I wake with my lover and we both feel totally lonely. We dont need to be alone on this day, just respectful that there is something very sacred going on. That may mean less talk, less enthusiasm for a particular commitment. Its ok to be quiet, not out all the time. There are four ways to escape loneliness. They are called the four substitutes, They are sex, food, greed and religion. Each is an attachment to something outside ourselves in order to fill the emptiness. But how can we be filled when we are empty? Those substitutes are like Band-Aids over a cut. You will see loneliness in churches, meditation halls, yoga classes. People running away from where they are in order to become something new. That is the sign of emptiness, the running toward and the running from. Loneliness is the key to love To really love, you must be lonely. That is it. Many people come to love to avoid loneliness but loneliness is never avoided. So then they are in an abusive relationship because they want company, they want predictability. They want, want, want and really they are afraid of being lonely. Loneliness is not a tough place if you are alone with someone you like. To like that person you are alone with you must do things alone that are worthily of liking. This is the problem isnt it. We are often two people and when we are alone we are that other person that we would not like others to see. Then in love and relationship someone does see. They see the self we dont like because we were alone with that part and we didnt even like it. We were so lonely and it was so bad that we went and found someone to cure the loneliness. But they make it worse because now two people dont like who we are when we are alone. What to do then? Loneliness is depression. It is also the victory of the monk who lives in isolation for 3 years 3 months 3 days and 3 hours. They live alone in order to get past the dislike of the loneliness. Then it becomes a friend, not a problem. Much attention seeking is loneliness because that person doesnt like who they are alone. So they become obsessed with approval of friends and lovers, because that masks the loneliness. But that person who cannot be lonely, sit in the discomfort of it, cannot love. They can mimic love, repeat books or react but that person who cannot be fully miserably lonely and sit in that experience must become self obsessed. Then they seek others to do the same. They are not in the circuit of the average person seeking to be liked so that there is a security, from which they know about life, and from this they think there is love. The seeker of God is lonely and cannot love. The seeker of enlightenment is lonely and cannot love. Loneliness is the path to both God and enlightenment. It is an emptiness, not a doing. As soon as we do the thing, in other words seek love, seek God, seek enlightenment, we are in mind, wanting and wanting always blocks love. There are ways to be comfortable being lonely. Turn off the TV, throw away the chocolate, reduce food intake, give more than get, moderate alcohol, become happy with life as it is, help others reduce suffering. This is the path to living with emptiness and loneliness and enjoying it. In fact, loving it. http://www.chriswalker.com.au Chris Walker is a world leading change agent, an environmentalist and author of more than 20 books. Born and bred in Australia, he consults to people and organisations throughout the world on improved relationships, health and lifestyle through the application of the Universal laws of Nature. The result he offers is that we stay balanced, share loving relationships, work with passion, enjoy success, and live our personal truth. To learn more about Chriss work and journeys to Nepal, visit http://www.chriswalker.com.au — http://www.chriswalker.com.au Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Walker http://EzineArticles.com/?sacred-Love—Overcoming-Loneliness&id=335054
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