WHERE DID YOUR LONELINESS BEGIN?

DEAR FRIENDS- So many of us struggle with a chronic and painful feeling of aloneness. In a recent essay titled "The End of Loneliness" I described how awakening a beautiful and unconditional love for yourself is the true cure for releasing your loneliness once and for all. This is so because warmly loving and thoroughly connecting to your body, your heart and your spirit releases the inner sense of emptiness and fills you with good feelings in a way that nothing else ever will.

Almost everyone blames themselves for the loneliness they carry. This sad and tragic lie must be dispelled by the light of love and truth! When our aloneness has lasted a long time we come to doubt our own worth and lovableness, believing that somehow a flaw in ourselves has led to our pain. And this unfair and undeserved self-doubt only adds to the sense of isolation!

But what if the actual truth is this- that we are now and always have been completely and totally lovable! Where, then, did our loneliness and unfulfilled longing for love begin?

With my utter faith in the "rightness" of human nature and the inherent goodness of life, I reject the idea that a painful sense of isolation is an inevitable part of life. In fact I know that the exact opposite is true- that we are born feeling completely connected to ourselves and belonging to this beautiful universe! And that all we needed was for our "hard-wired" capacity for connection to be nurtured and maintained by our family, culture and society.

To the degree that this occurs, we go through life feeling "part of things", without any chronic or desperate sense of disconnectedness. And this remains our feeling, deep in the core of our body and spirit- whether or not we have a satisfying romantic connection in our lives.

But if we don't feel this way- and that is the truth for perhaps the majority of people in this day and age (regardless of their relationship status)- why is this so?

How did we lose the beautiful sense of connection we had when we came into the world?

Here is the answer to that crucial question.
I have repeatedly observed that when we struggle with deep and chronic loneliness in our life as adults, this is somehow an unconscious duplication of the aloneness/isolation/alienation we experienced growing up. As adults we tend to reproduce the inner feeling/emotional climate of our upbringing. We are absolutely not "choosing" this! Rather, it is the inevitable result of deep and unconscious emotional conditioning.

But we can and for the sake of our happiness must understand our own history, and with compassion and deep insight use that knowledge to release our conditioning and restore our natural sense of connection.

So in the service of your love for yourself and the final healing of your loneliness, I encourage you to turn within and explore these questions about your own history. 1. What was you relationship like with your Mother? Especially, try to understand what was difficult about the connection with her. 2. Repeat this same inquiry regarding your Father.

With each of your parents, did you feel deeply seen and validated, warmly loved, totally secure? Or were there difficulties and breakdowns in the quality of connection that you needed?

Were you- in some important way- somehow lonely in your family?

Get the idea? Since we are born feeling unified with ourselves and the world around us, a child who had satisfying connections with his/her parents- and especially Mother- will go through life with little of that deep and chronic loneliness that haunts so many people. And they will not experience any long-term paralysis about making happy/satisfying connections with other people- friends, a special lover, etc. Because the capacity to make wonderful connections- and be satisfied by them!- will be "in their bones". From the great and satisfying connections with Mom (especially) and Dad growing up.

Once you clearly and compassionately see the actual beginnings of your loneliness, you will understand once and for all that it's NOT YOUR FAULT that you feel this way! And in a great act of self-love you will be empowered to release the sadness of how your loneliness began. This finally makes room in your body, mind and spirit for the joy of connection- with yourself, other people and this beautiful world- that you've always needed and thoroughly deserve. LOTS OF LOVE- BRYAN