The Big Pause: Aloneness

Photo Credit: Luciana Aranha

I was initiated into my “aloneness training” about a decade ago when my heart was broken into one million pieces suddenly. This heartbreak was unlike past heartbreaks because it became the catalyst for a breaking wide open that changed me forever.

I was right smack in the middle of my ten day yoga teacher training with Rusty Wells in San Francisco when this break-up came; and I wore the victim dress for a lot longer than I should have. (When I look back I kind of feel like I must have looked like the character pathetically strumming her guitar and singing on the steps in the movie Say Anything, lamenting about a boy she couldn’t get over. My lamenting was published a few years after the break-up in the form of a poetry book.) I cried and cried and cried in every practice, the yoga was there to catch me and I eventually learned how to surrender into it.

Surrender is key to aloneness.

I met my Metta practice during this time. Metta is the practice of “loving kindness,” and it is a pillar of the Bhakti (devotional) yoga practice. It was months after the shattering that I began to look at the pieces and realized that I hadn’t attended to some really deep and old heartbreak from when I was little. The days that I bowed onto my mat and dedicated my practice to the ones who broke my heart were the days that I began to see light in the cracks.

Forgiveness is key to aloneness.

It was months and months later that I was able to dedicate my practice in the same way to myself some days. It was sort of like that quote, “if I asked you to name all of the people you love, how long would it take to name yourself…” I’ve always been brilliant at putting others before myself, this practice has taught me that loving yourself fully first makes the love beyond you even bigger - so I loved, and loved, and loved.

Some people think loneliness and aloneness are the same, but they are not.

I was lonely at the time. I felt far away from myself and not at ease with me. I wanted to move instead of sit in a puddle of tears, I wanted to do my way out of the pain and suffering. I had never been alone in my life; I was born the oldest of five children, I married right out of college, and then I had a string of long term boyfriends one after another - at 43 I found myself in a place that felt really foreign and uncomfortable.

“Loneliness is an invitation from the Divine…”

I began to turn my loneliness into aloneness when I was given this sentiment written in black ink on a gold card by my intuitive healer at the time. She told me to sit in the loneliness, to welcome it, to date myself, to be okay with the invitation…and so I did.

Acceptance is key to aloneness.

And you know what happened? I fell in love with myself in brand-new ways, so in-love in fact that I designed a new life to go with this love. I began to travel on my own, I started a digital business to allow this travel, I started writing about my travels, I began to see the world differently.

It was in Bali that I received the mantra: “You are whole, You are healed, You are holy.” I felt a definitive shift from lack which I feel defines loneliness (Osho calls this “a negative state”) to wholeness which gives way to aloneness (which he says is “presence of oneself” or positive). Osho says, “when there is no ‘significant other’ in our lives we can either be lonely, or enjoy the freedom that solitude brings.” Like so many other things, choosing is key to aloneness; perception and choosing to see the positive.

“Being a light unto yourself” (Osho) is key to aloneness.

I have a dear friend that reminded me recently that it is even bigger than this, when you are alone you are hyper aware; everything feels like a deeper presencing - everything. And, as I choose to be in this heightened state of awareness most of the time, the presence of myself has become a delicious place to be. It is addictive in fact, add that I’m getting older and set in my ways and the aloneness for me (coupled with a Line 1 of Solitude in my Gene Keys) is an incredibly comfortable state for me.

The pandemic is inviting so many of us to surrender, to forgive, to sit with the invitation of being lonely, to choose to be your own light and see the positives, and to feel into your aloneness as if it’s a breath of fresh air, a new type of freedom…

What will you do?