Being Alone Without Being Lonely:
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- June 16, 2021
How Buddhism Helps Us Come Home to Our Selves
A lot of us struggle with being single. Whether you’re single by choice or going through a divorce or break-up, the ego has a field day when we’re not coupled. This time is often very fertile ground for our mind’s greatest fears and negative self-talk to plant seeds. The ego tells us stories about how we’re broken, unworthy and unlovable. Our minds run wild with tales of being a social outcast, never finding a romantic partner and then eventually dying alone.
When we’re lonely, we feel disconnected. We can experience this sense of disconnection in the midst of other people just as easily as we can feel it when we sit in solitude. So if loneliness isn’t about the company of another human being, then what’s it all about?
I’ve come to believe – through personal experience, research and working with clients – that loneliness is about being disconnected from our SELVES. Not from our mind or ego – because that’s not who we really are – but from our Source, our Soul, our Highest Self. The place within us that is calm and peaceful, that is able to observe the chatter of the mind, that we refer to when we say the word “Namaste”: the Light in me honors the Light in you.
