How to Overcome Loneliness?
Questioner: Acharya Ji, what is the difference between loneliness and aloneness?
Acharya Prashant: Simply put, loneliness is when you are not alright with yourself. Loneliness is when you are just not okay with yourself. Aloneness is when you are alright with yourself. When you’re not alright with yourself, obviously, you will seek an alternative to your company. I’m not okay with myself. So, what will I need? I’ll need somebody else to be with. That’s the state of the lonely person.
His self is the ego, and the ego lives in great contradictions, therefore, great conflict. The ego does not really like itself. The ego labels itself as unworthy and incomplete. Therefore, the ego cannot just be with itself and feel fine. The ego must necessarily reach out to the world and want a companion.
Can there be somebody to relate to? Can there be somebody to sit with, fill myself up with, form a bond with? Can there be somebody else I can look at? Because if I look at myself, all I see is nonsense. Worse still, if I continue looking at myself, then I see that I am false and I don’t exist. So, I don’t want to look at myself.
If I am all alone with myself, it becomes a very dangerous situation for me. First of all, I feel uncomfortable. And if the situation continues for long, then the situation threatens my very existence. If I’m only with myself, I have nobody else to look at but myself, right? And if I look at myself, then I won’t survive for long because I am not. I am false.
I’m a bundle of mischief. I’m a bundle of illusions. I have no center. I have no reality. I’m not rooted in Truth. Everything about me is just hot air. So, I would rather that the eyes look elsewhere. So, I’ll pick up the phone and call somebody up, or I’ll travel to the market, or I’ll look for marriage or a social circle or a weekend group or some kind of a community. That’s loneliness.
Who is the subject of loneliness? The false ‘I,’ the ego. Loneliness comes to the ego and only to the ego. Only the ego remains lonely, and we know the story thereafter, the entire sequence of repercussions. You are lonely, so you go and tie a knot with someone who is as lonely as you are. And then there are mutual expectations, which obviously cannot be fulfilled because neither of you are capable of fulfilling them.
When you could not give nice company to yourself, how would you give nice company to the other? When you could not tolerate being with yourself, how is the other going to tolerate being with you? The fellow who strikes a relationship because he is feeling lonely, will definitely end up frustrated. But when he is frustrated, he always has the option to stop looking outwards for company and instead face the mirror.
That option is always available. In fact, every new disappointment is an opportunity. In a series of failed expectations, in a series of failed relationships, every new failure is an opportunity to reflect in the mirror, to look at one’s face honestly for once. Usually, the ego refuses to do that. If loneliness is not healed by one relationship, then the ego ventures out in search of another object to grab and clutch and stick to.
“Oh, this one could not give me what I wanted. Let me try elsewhere.” That’s what the ego usually does. So, life just remains a series of frustrations, each frustration not really different from the previous one or the subsequent one.
Occasionally, rarely, it happens that after being defeated and jolted and thrashed and disappointed many a times, the ego says, “It does not really look wise to keep trying in the same way. Every new overture I can see is just a rehash of the previous attempts. With the same kind of attempts, how am I going to obtain new results? I better stop the idiocy.”
It is rare when the ego acknowledges that it is an idiot, but it does sometime happen. And then one looks at oneself. It is quite painful to begin with. One does not like looking at oneself. As we had said, “All one sees is trash.” But you can see trash only if the seeing is honest. Right? So, something about you then is not trash. What is it that is not trash? The seeing. Who is seeing? The lonely one has begun to see. In seeing, what he is seeing is worthless. What he is seeing is worthless, but the seeing is not worthless, and it’s a new thing that is happening to him. Something really worthy is dawning.
If he musters courage and allows the seeing to continue, then the trash just falls away. The trash has now been called for what it is, rubbish. Once you call rubbish as rubbish, you don’t feel like supporting it for long. You don’t support it, it falls. So, trash falls away. What is it that remains? The seeing. This seeing is purity itself. This seeing is Truth itself.
Once all the nonsense has fallen, one finds that one does not dislike himself so much anymore. After all, what is it that was dislikable? The rubbish that one has gathered about his being. Right? One looked at himself and saw just rubbish, and that is what was so horrible. And that is what one made look for company somewhere, elsewhere.
Now when you really, honestly, ruthlessly see, then the rubbish falls. When the rubbish has gone, the need to hunt for company has also gone, which means the loneliness has gone.
Loneliness, when confronted, shows up as false. All that about you which cried to seek a companion, a partner, something to fill yourself up with, is shown up as an influence upon the mind, is shown up as not your reality.
You see that you really have been conditioned to ask for company. You see that you really have been conditioned to treat a few things as indispensable. Those things are not indispensable. That which you take as really non-negotiable in your life, might really be of no use. It’s just that physical and social influence has indoctrinated you into believing in something totally false. It’s only one’s falsenesses that seek completion.
Truth is complete in itself. Why would Truth seek something to add to itself? Only the false, the incomplete, the hollow wants to gather and accumulate and add and combine.
Are you getting it?
So, loneliness, honestly looking at itself, turns into something that can smile at itself, not really frown, not really look at oneself in disgust.
Now this refined ego is no more scared of looking at the mirror. When it is no more scared of looking at the mirror, then it is alright with itself. When it is alright with itself, then it rebels being with itself. That is called aloneness.
Aloneness is the state of the ego in which it does not despise itself anymore. Aloneness is the state of being in which you don’t hate yourself so much anymore.
