Relax into your Loneliness

Trying to fill this yearning with a companion is the logical response; but it is a bottomless pit. Loneliness cannot be satisfied in such a manner.

It is a strange thing to say, but when you are lonely, the first step is not to run out and find someone. The first step is to stop running away from our aloneness.

I’ve heard a beautiful quote once: Aloneness is our nature. Loneliness is us running away from it.

What does that mean? You are alone; so just be alone. Loneliness – the despair – only comes when we begin to run away from it, when we tell ourselves our lives shouldn’t be this way.

The most important step is inner acceptance. Relax into your loneliness. Simple sit down and feel it, explore how it feels. Don’t think about it, just feel it through your body. Welcome it, let it be there without tensing up your body or feeding it with your thoughts, and you’ll find the sadness slowly begins to melt away.

Next, learn how to nourish your own heart. Make yourself happy. Think loving thoughts towards yourself. Play with love as energy; send it rolling up and down your body, letting it build. One day your heart will overflow with love. Only then can you be able to love – how can you give what you don’t have?

Delight in your aloneness

Celebrate your aloneness. Fill your free time with play and song. Let it be a genuine joy, one that comes from having melted away the sadness. For this is the strangest thing – when you no longer care about love, you are the most likely to find it.

Why? No longer are you needy; no longer are you desperate and lonely. You are happy, and people will begin to take notice. “What does he have, what is she doing to be so happy?” they will ask. And they will want some of that joy, and they will begin to come closer.

And when you are in a relationship, no longer will there be grasping or clinging. You are no longer looking for the other person to come along and make everything right. Only then can there be true romance. Only then can you love for the sake of loving, give for the sake of giving.

First learn to delight in being alone, to stop running away from your loneliness. Once you have learned to delight in yourself – that is when you can delight in the other. Only then can romance really start.

To learn more about Urban Monk, visit UrbanMonk.net.

Page: 1 2