Fear of Loneliness

I enjoy our goldfish pond.

Winter comes and freezes the pond over as the fish bring all of their functions to a bare minimum and hibernate beneath the thick, icy, barren world above them, only to return to full life along with the flora and fauna that surround them come Springtime. The pond is a wonderful place to sit for reflection when one feels a little lost, a little sad, or lonely.

We all have days when we feel lonely, but the very idea of loneliness comes from the false notion that we are separate and isolated parts in a world filled with other separate, isolated parts. In truth, we can no more be separate from our world than a fish can be separate from the water in which it swims.

When we begin to look at the boundaries we see as so solid, they prove to be, in fact, quite porous - such as the boundary of ice above the goldfish in the Winter. For example, it is not clear exactly where our skin ends and the air begins when we consider how our skin is affected by changes in the quality of the air and that air flows through us.

When the air in our environment is dry, our skin becomes dry, and when it is humid, our skin becomes moist and supple.

By the same token, it is difficult sometimes to distinguish the boundary between one person and another, especially when our lives tie us together so inextricably.

Every piece of our lives has an effect that touches all the people associated with us. On an even more subtle level, when we share a more intimate relationship with another person, we often pick up on their energy, feeling how they feel and attuning to them, whether we mean to or not; whether we choose to or not.

This is what we mean when we say a mood or a feeling is contagious. We cannot help but be part of the realities of the people we know and love because we take form from the same spiritual energy, and this energy unifies all life. This energy is the light that we instinctively know to move toward, and it is the light we dissolve into as we move beyond our individual egos.

If loneliness, or the fear of loneliness, is a temporary condition based on an incomplete understanding of what we are made of, we can think of its presence as a catalyst for exploring our ideas about our realities. We can respond by testing the boundaries we believe separate us from the life within and all around us. If we test them, we might discover that they are not so solid after all and that we can never really be alone.

With love & light,

Rob