Sunday, June 8, 2014

Who is the you who sometimes feels alone?

"At one point, when the thought of life all by myself alarmed me, I left the house and swore not to return until I'd met a man with a loneliness as strong and enduring as mine, so we might pool our sorrows. I met the mailman coming up the walk. "Are you lonely?" I said.

"Of course," he said and handed me my mail. "But there are things far worse than that." He turned and walked away, and I went back inside."

Linda McCullough Moore, "On My Way Now", The Sun, April, 2014, p.19

We are born alone and we die alone. Being alone is our essential nature with relationships in between birth and death which gives us our sense of self and on which we are utterly dependent for everything even something as elemental as speech from which comes our ability to think.

What could be worse than loneliness? Most people would say abuse, stress, smothering by others when we want to scream and beg God to be left alone.

At some point we come to realize that we are none of our identities that have been constructed for us and by us over the years of living. We realize that the roles we play, the thoughts we have, the feelings we experience, the behaviors we manifest are not who we are. So when we covenant to promote and affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person what person(s) are we talking about? The sense of personhood, identity, is a social construction and as such, an illusion and a projection and a social role and status. Who, my friends, is the you who is alone? Who or what is this thing that has inherent worth and dignity?

My Kind Of Church Music - "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2

4 comments:

  1. It's getting heavy, Dave, your question of who is the who. Maybe we are really owls. Hoo, hoo, hoo

    ReplyDelete
  2. At a mystical and spiritual level you are never alone. You are always one with the all whether you realize it and are aware of it or not. As Luke Skywalker said in Starwars, "May the Force be with you." It is the ego that becomes lonely because it is not getting attention which it craves desperately and does everything in its power to convince you that you have been rejected and abandoned which is a big lie. Your job at times like this is to remember who you are and get in touch with that from which you are manifested. This Life force is eternal and is always available to us if we but turn inward and enjoy the bliss of presence.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Linda McCullough Moore writes in her story, "On My Way Now" which appeared in the Sun magazine, April, 2014:

    "Every family has a nationality: we were mostly Irish. Every family has a color: we were mousy brown, gray, tan, beige in a certain light. Every family has a shape: we were amorphous. Every family has a sound: we whined, complained, bemoaned, groaned on occasion. Every family has a tone: we were monotonous, droning. We were not lively. We spent a lot of time in church, and when we were at home, we ate unconscionable amounts of ice cream and worried about things." p.20

    ReplyDelete
  4. It is written in A Course In Miracles:

    "Everyone makes an ego or a self for himself, which is subject to enormous variation because of its instability. He also makes an ego for everyone else he perceives, which is equally variable. Their interaction is a process that alters both, because they were not made by or with the Unalterable. It is impossible to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place in the mind as when it involves physical proximity. Thinking about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is physical interaction. There could be no better example that the ego is only an idea and not a fact." T-4.II.2:1-6

    And so what is this "person" who has inherent worth and dignity? Is it the ego we have made up, but the creation of what the Course calls the Unalterable?

    ReplyDelete

Print Friendly and PDF