Not a great topic is it? But surely, you’ve experienced it. And ironically, most of us have. It isn’t uncommon, on the path of yoga and awakening, to experience a form of isolation and breaking apart from everything that you used to know and used to be. Sometimes this transition in life can feel really lonely. Let’s call this a transitory loneliness, as it is merely the realisation of all the ways you have separated yourself from the world. And in this coming into awareness you begin to shed these, slowly and steadily experiencing more and more connection.
The sense of belonging does not come from where you are or who you are with, but more so how you are relating to the world that surrounds you. When we are in suffering, we experience ourselves as distanced from others. We say things like “I don’t belong here with these people” but really what we are saying is “I can’t find it in me to feel connected to this present moment with these specific people”. The reasons for these can be many.
The first step is acknowledging and bringing honest awareness to what we are feeling and experiencing. It’s okay to feel different. It’s okay to feel separate or alienated. But when we make this into our story, when we believe in what we feel as something fixed- we’re in trouble. The key here is to allow and open up, and to whatever extent we are able to- welcome this feeling as we would any other.
Loneliness is a tricky one to catch because it creeps up on us when we feel most vulnerable and afraid, but it is through seeing and feeling that we may release it and come into a much grander and much more expansive experience of connection and union with ourselves and following the world around us.
The amount of bliss and ecstasy that can be felt in connection and openness at any given moment, with whomever you may be surrounded by on your path is truly a gift to marvel at. We may be experiencing life through a single vessel with our own unique senses, but in no way does this have to ever truly make us lonely, but rather gifted with the opportunity to discover the world from our unique vantage point, until it merges with everything it feels and sees, making loneliness but a faint memory of a distant past.
Love -A
Words by @antoniafridarothschild
