Feeling separate from the one we seek

15 February 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Will I ever get there?” How many of us at different times wonder whether we’ll achieve what we set out to do in terms  of our core goals? They’re commonly used words, wanting, success, goals, achievement, accomplishment. It can seem like we’re forever seeking but never getting “there”. Perhaps if you get there, that can become another “here” and there’s another “there” to strive towards.

Without wishing to get too far into the realm of human accomplishment in practical terms, because surely there’s lot’s who have achieved a lot. I’m thinking more of the inner driver, the inner wish, that which senses also a lack of accomplishment and that something is missing.

Yogis and others would say this is because we get ensnared by desire, wanting, in the egoic sense, and we get attached to it and it eats away inside. Others might say it is inappropriate goals. Or that we have a limiting belief that we won’t make it. All of these and more could be explored.

However, I’m interested here in the very fact of seeking. In terms of non-dual philosophy, by seeking we’re setting ourselves up to be another subject in search of an object, that which we seek, and therefore immediately make ourselves separate from it. And this can be the knub of the problem, the sense of being separate.

A classic way the sense of separation is experienced is feeling very separate from one you are in relationship with. The anxiety of separation eats into the relationship and drives the other one away, especially if it is accompanied by intense neediness, seeking love from another.

More generally people can feel separate in all sorts of ways, such as in social situations, feeling lonely, feeling apart from others, or engagement with life and living in its broadest sense.

Feeling separate from that which we seek could be said to be a core human dilemma. From a non-dualist perspective we are all One. Yet our human ego experience is that we are separate, and hence get to feel unloved, alone, abandoned, isolated, or at least those of us that connect at this level. So we might say that the early experience of the infant at fearing being separated from her/his mother taps into this core human dilemma. Existential aloneness and problems with infant bondedness get mixed up with each other, one fuelling the other.

From a spiritual perspective, this is all an illusion and hence part of the work is to let go of such feelings and to focus awareness on the sense of connectedness within us, as in meditation but also in our engagement with others. For example one can work to increase the feeling of connection and to hold to that in contact with others.

This is the sort of learnings we provide in The Point of Awareness.

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Being alone on a Friday evening

5 August 2011 By

I remember a time when on a Friday evening I would look out of my window at uni at all those people walking busily up or down Oxford’s High Street, going somewhere or other. In my eyes, there was lots going on, and I wasn’t part of it.

I don’t know whether you’ve had the experience that everybody seems to be having a good time except you. It’s like certain people always have the “desirable” people as their girl or boyfriends. There are those who always seem to be at the centre of attention, to be “popular”, to have lots of friends, and they always go to parties and have a fabulous time. But you (or I) don’t. It’s a bummer, isn’t it!

It was only later, after much soul searching, that I finally discovered that there were many people just like me! For example, I thought that the really cool people had girl-friends (this was at that time a hugely male-dominated university) and that women were in short supply! Then when I finally got to get inside the hallowed grounds of a women’s college (yes, they had segregation), I found out that there were quite a lot of women there with no boy-friends.

Just in case you are wondering, this is actually a very important discovery, of great value to just about all of us, which I think a lot of us make at some point in our lives. That is that we are not alone, despite appearances to the contrary. The human experience is to feel alone and separate. Once we get across this particular illusion, there are actually many others who have similar experiences. And just in case there is any doubt, those seemingly “popular” people could be having the most enormously screwed up lives and be desperately alone and unhappy inside – as I found out about what later happened to many of the people I was referring to above. They have just formed a different “creative adjustment” to life to deal with it.

The universality of life experience is one of the great discoveries of doing group work, where you can find that your life drama is actually shared by others – and that you are no alone, but At One with others.

The challenge is to find a way to step outside the polarity of aloneness/At-oneness and find what unites you to everybody else. We explore this polarity, among others, on my programs.

So, as you get to your Friday evening, reflect on the illusion of separation, and perhaps take into a meditation the understanding that “I are That”, I am one with All. And allow the feeling of being connected to All to be there for you in your meditation

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Being alone or at-one

20 May 2011 By

Perhaps as the weekend is almost upon us, you might be looking forward to time with others. But you might be going home to an empty house or flat. You might be going home to others, but inside you might feel alone. We can be in the midst of many people and feel utterly alone.

Being alone is perhaps a fundamental of our existence. Existentialists would say it is a “given”. Some enjoy it, but many fear it and try to avoid it. It can be a cause of immense pain. It often goes with the desire to be loved, with an accompanying fear of not being loved and of actually a fear of aloneness, “there’s nobody there for me”. So the experience of aloneness often goes with the fear of no love.

Unless we learn to face aloneness, we will continue to give it power over us. That’s one reason why people who’ve recently broken up from a relationships sometimes deliberately spend time alone, to become accustomed to it, so that they don’t immediately get another relationship on the rebound.

Like any activity involving facing our fears, aloneness has much to teach us. Aloneness is connected to the experience of the void, of nothingness, of which fear can be a major underlying driver for avoiding being alone. Not the best reason for a relationship, but often done.

Being present with the feeling of fear is a vital but very challenging way of dealing with this issue. When we face our fears they dissolve.

However, as we approach the weekend, you could also practice something much lighter, but also instructive.

If possible, go for a walk by yourself in nature, in the countryside or a park, or at least where there are trees and bushes. Plain rock and earth will also do. The point here is to spend time with these nature things. Stop somewhere and take some deeper breaths and allow yourself to connect with you inside, and be still. Perhaps keep your awareness on your breath as you do this. There, when you feel more connected with you inside and at peace, then allow your awareness to focus on the things around you. Be really present with them. Really attend to them. Imagine yourself feeling them, as if they are alive (which of course they are). Just feel nature around you. Notice its energy. Let the energy of nature flow into you. Breathe in the energy, and allow it to merge with you inside, perhaps in your heart centre. Allow yourself to love nature around and in you. And now be very present with the feeling. Allow it to grow. Enjoy.

When you’ve done this a while, perhaps notice how much part of you nature is, and how much you are a part of nature.

Are we really apart? Or a part?

To learn more about developing your own inner awareness of who you really are, and how to connect with your inner essence as One, take part in The Point of Awareness programme. Read the brochure and sign up here

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Reaching a crisis or a turning point in your life

29 September 2010 By

What might need to happen for you to trigger a re-evaluation of your life?

Often it’s some form of mid-life crisis – except it seems this is now happening to much younger people.

It is being suggested by a recent survey that people’s “mid-life crisis” even starts as early as the mid-30’s, due to work and relationship pressures. It is being said that the age group 35-44 is more prone to feelings of loneliness or depression. Traditionally such a crisis was associated with the 40’s age group but the research found that it is starting earlier.

This fits with our own anecdotal evidence that the age group that is most active in seeking new directions and in joining our seminars is exactly this age group.

The research mentioned above cites difficulties in relationships at work, financial worries impacting people with families, long working hours and the impact that has on home life, and relationship issues within the home such as the distribution of household chores, child care, sexual problems and arguments. This group also has the highest expectations in terms of career success.

Our own impression is that the stress of modern living is taking its toll on younger and younger people and that thus the questioning of what it is all about, the review of life direction, the search for new meaning so often characteristic of the ‘40’s age group in the past is now spreading more widely across the population. I would also suggest that the “Great Recession” has led more people to question the materialistic values that have underpinned the previous long period of economic growth: “What was all that for?”

Such crises leading people to re-evaluate where they are going come for a wide variety of reasons. There are the issues at work and in relationship mentioned above, but a relationship breakup is just one of a range of factors: it could be a redundancy or a major change at work, a major or life-threatening illness or accident, bereavement, moving home, birth of children, children leaving home for some reason, menopause, issues with fertility, and any number of other matters that force on one the sense that somehow life is not delivering as had seemed likely. It can come gradually or as a sudden realisation. It might be a prolonged period of depression or a sudden event that acts as a wake-up call. At some point in all this people start to reach out, search for help and look for solutions. And re-evaluate.

The re-evaluation might be about finding ways to manage or change the condition that led them to reach out in the first place. Or it might be more fundamental, about creating more meaningful contact with people, what they want out of life, what it is all for, what can give a sense of meaning, how they can re-gain a sense of control, what can re-ignite joy and contentment.

What is so important is that these people make the decision to make a change. This is the key first condition for self-empowerment, the decision at some level to take responsibility and do something about it.

You can work with that.

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Aloneness in the New Year

8 January 2008 By

Here you may now be, a few more days into the New Year, the festivities of Christmas behind you, getting back into your job if you have one, perhaps caught up again in the rush of busyness? Some may be wondering what happened to the break – where did it go? Others may feel the sense of let-down, back facing whatever isn’t working in their lives, maybe even feeling alone once again after the sense of connection that the feast period can bring.

This is when any commitment you make to have your life be different gets tested. This is when it’s important to have any intentions you set for the New Year forefront, to think about and refine and yet keep as a point of commitment. Any intention will surely be tested – that’s part of the process.

For a long time, I used to feel an anti-climax after Christmas. All that expectation and then what? Christmas after a while became false in my mind, as something that had really long lost its real meaning as a celebration of a birth. It seemed like a materialistic orgy, fanned by the advertising industry and our desire for more. Also, it was after Christmas that I would feel most alone. I remember once reading an Ernest Hemingway novel and then howling buckets at the seeming hopelessness of ever finding someone to share my life, that at one level I would always be alone. Then I found a nice philosophical basis for how I felt in Existentialism. Then I filled the gap by becoming a busy professional and busyness filled my life, until that is I got divorced and lost my mother to breast cancer and started to explore what my aloneness was really about.

I don’t know how much you resonated with the story described in the last posting. It has clearly impacted huge numbers of people. It’s been carried on almost all the major national newspapers and on a number of TV channels. And we’ve had a vast number of calls. Relatives have now come forward and so family will be at the woman’s funeral, along with a lot of well-wishers. However I was particularly struck by the people who said they could not bear to think of that woman having no visitors in the 5 years she was in a nursing home and have nobody come to her funeral. In the Sunday Times a columnist started her article with a conversation with two single friends about just this situation.

I finished my last posting by stating the point that unless we deal with our own experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up for each of us, we’ll very likely get that experience at the end of our lives. One thing we all share is our mortality. It is an existential reality.

I think one way this experience shows up is around relationship. We many of us search for another in our lives in order to fill the gap inside us, the fear of being alone, of not being loved, of feeling unlovable, of not being good enough or worthy enough, or what other way that is felt or thought about. Then we lose our partner and we are alone. I think a huge number who called us were alone and had lost someone.

My own take on this dilemma of existence is that we are never alone, we are at one. Our journey and our challenge is to re-discover who we really are all along. Also, for me, this is no mere rationalisation or belief but a felt experience. Our essence is pure joy, love, enthusiasm, aliveness, laughter, energy. To know this is to experience this in ourselves and to see it in others, whoever they are and whatever our connection with them. A lot of our personal development training is about this.

Your understanding might be different. But for both you and me, we have the same challenge, to transcend the human experience of aloneness, in whatever way that shows up.

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Being alone, being at one

4 January 2008 By

How would you like to be in a box, so to speak, at your funeral, with only two people there for the funeral, neither of whom know you?

Some of you who know us may have seen by now that my wife, an Interfaith Minister, has been on regional television, and now it seems in the national press, about a case that seems to have grabbed people’s imagination here. This is about the disturbing case of a cremation she is to officiate at near us in Wiltshire in which the deceased would have only my wife and the funeral director present to mark her life.

To make her preparations for the service, Akasha went to the care home, some miles from the woman’s home town, which seemed only to be able to provide two photos and virtually no information about her. She seemed to have no family. Nobody had visited her in the 5 years she had been there. Images from Dickens’ novels come to mind. My wife came home with the pictures, one of which showed the woman as a beautiful one in her youth. “How sad”, she said, “that this woman who probably had all sorts of hopes and dreams when young, was to end her days like this and no one would come to her funeral”. She sat with the pictures some days and then she went to a local newspaper in the place where the woman had lived all her life, the Swindon Advertiser who promptly ran a story about it right after New Year’s Day. This was picked up by BBC television and away it went. Many people started to call and soon there was a group who did not know her but felt strongly about it and were determined to be there for her. What a statement! What a demonstration of human bondedness, of caring, and, who knows, perhaps a realisation that “There but for the grace of God go I”.

This is not the place to go into anything further about this woman. However, funerals are not only about marking an ending. They are often also for the living, those left behind. It got me thinking. I know there’s a part of me that separates myself from others at times, and can be very in myself. In the past, I have cut myself off from others. My father spent the last few of his 94 years house-bound and unable to read, with hardly any visitors, alone with himself.

Perhaps you might like to think about what thoughts this story brings up for you – and for the very many who find themselves in similar situations, alone in senior persons’ homes, unvisited, left to their own devices, frail, not communicated with, alone in their final years. More and more of us face this, partly because more of us are single, but also because we are living longer, perhaps running out of friends who are still alive. Also, although we live longer, we many of us are not in good health.

In the UK, the nuclear family has been in decline, the elderly living separately, their children and grandchildren in different towns or separated by distance, and with insufficient financial and social provision for the former – no longer the granny living with the family, helping with the children, the source of wisdom and respect and the transmitter of memory.

Yet, this story also shows to me that when something happens that stirs our hearts, like an old woman without anybody at her funeral, the part of us that resonates in some way with her seeming aloneness feels touched and we reach out to her and want to be there with her, to honour her life and her presence on this earth with us, as she, or at least her body form, is symbolically removed from us.

At another level, I’m also tempted to think, she may not have felt alone herself. That is an assumption. Who knows how she felt in herself. Maybe in her final days she came to feel an at-oneness with herself, to feel complete with herself and with life. Maybe she found her inner contentment.

I am also tempted to think about how aging brings us face to face with the fundamentals of existence, that we are born, grow up, will age and will die. At one level our lives are finite. Aging and old age challenges us to learn to come to be at peace with ourselves, to feel peace, joy and contentment within, or we might feel sure that we’ll find the travails of our latter years hard to deal with, Christmas feasting, wealth, status, material comfort or welfare state regardless. And at this point, we are all the same: physicality is no discriminator.

No wonder this story stirs us.

Have a happy and compassionate New Year.

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