LONELINESS

Krishnamurti says, "There's no escape from loneliness: it is a fact and escape from facts breeds confusion and sorrow." I am not yet certain whether he is referring to loneliness he is feeling while staying in Italy, or if he means loneliness in general. I think the two are the same for whether loneliness occurs while staying in Italy or shopping in a busy Canadian mall, it is the same feeling and arises out of a sense of separation from Infinite Mystery. I don't feel lonely very often, but when I do, I tend to resist it which of course makes it worse and is what Krishnamurti implies when he mentions what happens when one tries to escape from facts. As soon as I realize that I am resisting it, I will attempt to make friends with it and observe the feeling of emptiness. An aside: as I typed that previous sentence, I could almost here Adyashanti making some comment about emptiness being a normal part of truth.

Contemplating loneliness raises questions for me. Why can one be going merrily along through life when loneliness suddenly rises up out of one's depths? What brings about a sudden sence of separation from Source? It is probably some mental activity: a wish for something else maybe, that happens so quickly in the mind, the thought not even being completed, and the gut reacts with the separation of loneliness. But from what Krishnamurti is saying in the quote above, and in unquoted passages from before and after this quote, loneliness may be an intrinsic part of human existence and it just is. I will have to ponder this further or wait until I am more advanced spiritually before I can understand loneliness better.

Meanwhile, yesterday I did another search for Adyashanti groups in the hope of finding one that is fairly close to me and I am in luck. There is one in Chemainus that meets one Sunday a month. I fired off an email to the person in charge and hope she will invite me to join. Well, actually and honestly, I have no emotional attachment to whether I am invited to join the group. This may seem a little odd, that one would reach out to a group even though one doesn't care what the response will be. I don't know why this is so.

Krishnamurti also suggested that joining groups and controlling people and all the other games that egos play with each other are attempts to avoid loneliness. Interesting and I see his point even though my desire to join an Adyashanti group is driven by a desire for informed answers to questions I don't yet seem able to answer by my Self:
     "To commit oneself to some organization, to some belief or action is to be possessed by them, negatively; and positively is to possess. The negative and positive possessiveness is doing good, changing the world and the so-called love. To control another, to shape another in the name of love is the urge to possess; the urge to find security, safety in another and the comfort. Self-forgetfulness through another, through some activity makes for attachment. From this attachment, there's sorrow and despair and from this there is the reaction, to be detached. And from this contradiction of attachment and detachment arises conflict and frustration."

I interpret the above quote from Krishnamurti's Notebook as examples of how humans combat loneliness. It reminds me of my mother who deals with this feeling of separation from source by being needy. The more needy she is, the less family and friends want to be around her. Thus, her neediness is counterproductive to what she is attempting to achieve.

I just learned that my college classmate who is of a similar age as me and either has or was about to celebrate his fifty-sixth birthday, and who teamed with me to fix up a filthy little daycare for toddlers in Kathmandu, died of cancer on Monday. I find it curious that I did not know he had cancer and in the last couple of months, I have been thinking about him more than usual and last week as we drove by the hospital where he died, I was wondering if he was close by, maybe in another vehicle. I also wonder when he learned he had cancer and if I intuited that and if my bout of recent twelve-hour depression was some psychic information about him that I unknowingly drew from Universe, but couldn't interpret. This brings me back to the subject of loneliness and whether or not one sometimes is picking up on feelings of loneliness in others and thinking it is one's own loneliness that is afflicting one. I think we pick up on "vibes" of others more than we know.

Namaste