BELONGING

Turning Loneliness Toward Aloneness

 

Everybody wants to belong. That drive, a primal self-defense embedded deep in our psychology, is so strong that when we don’t belong to something it feels empty and frightening. We often interpret that as a failing on our part. Hence, for some of us, being alone is torturous. I would fill up the space with an overactive brain. I have a joke I tell that every sexual encounter I’ve ever had was a threesome: me, my partner, and my brain.

I was the eldest child, and the oldest of my closest cousins. My affinity was for adults, and I had a mild disdain for other kids. Like a lady cat who feels affection for her owners, but has no time for other animals. Hence, I spent a lot of time with the ladies in the kitchen or alone in my room. My mom said I would “explode,” making screaming crowd noises when I imagined myself leading a rock band, or make bomb noises exploding when I was leading troops into battle. I would be the hero, have no fear, and experience no pain. I learned to find some simple genius in my room and occupied the space that otherwise so frightened me. I carried that soothing albeit violent noise around my head growing up, never understanding the life I was missing.

In time, that nagging sense of missing out on something led me to search for meaning, belonging, or anything that might calm the scratchy uneasiness I felt. I would sit in bookstores and thumb through books from Crowley to Ram Dass. I tried meditation in many traditions. At the Zen Center, I was asked to sit in the hall because I couldn’t sit still.

Eventually I came across the work of Chogyam Trungpa. The fact that he was rather infamous appealed to a rebellious part of me that feared indoctrination. Discovering meditation gave me a way of filling that inner space with experiential learning.

My inner conversations began to turn from entertaining myself toward personal development. I was still filling up space, but now I had something useful to tell myself. Trungpa made a distinction between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness was a suffering ego state, that was so narrow we were not accepted and had no place to belong. Ego had grown too inflamed to fit anywhere, and hence I was never feel comfortable in the ordinary space of life. “I don’t belong here” might have been less about others looking down on me, bullying me, or not accepting me, and more about me trying to bully myself into being more than I needed to be. Maybe I didn’t belong because I was trying so hard to be accepted.  Maybe I had forgotten how to be who I was.

Or maybe I never knew. Maybe none of us do. Perhaps the only ones who feel comfortable in themselves are those who aren’t looking. I loved the scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen wonders why some people seem so together and decides to ask a beautiful couple passing on the street. “What’s your secret?” he asks. They stare blankly back, blink, shrug and say that they are simply vapid and superficial.

So are we destined to writhe in the turmoil of unsettled being or simply check out and join a cult? Many people driven by the insecurity of loneliness join movements led by charismatic figures who seem to supply them with the confidence they lack. That dynamic becomes heightened when the leader points to those we should blame for our woes. Once we have the bogey people, we can feel united with others in our ire. People lacking in self-acceptance and awareness are ripe to be led. The drive for acceptance is so strong we will sell our souls to feel united.

Thank goodness for the congenitally cynical. A slogan posted at Trungpa’s center said, “A healthy distrust of the rules will bring success.” He didn’t encourage anyone to be a joiner. He didn’t expect anyone to believe what they did not discover for themselves. Meditation, free of manipulation, is pointing to what is already there, not making shit up to make us feel better. Tara Brach teaches about “radical acceptance” — accepting the shadow, the doubt, the fear, and the loneliness.

Accepting loneliness means we can rest in our unease without trying to fix it. When we are able to rest in the places we are less comfortable, when we are less willing to throw ourselves away just to belong, we begin to really know ourselves. Loneliness becomes aloneness. Aloneness is a space of self-acceptance. When we accept ourselves, our ego can relax and become less inflamed. Then there is more space for everything else — for everyone else. People have room to be themselves instead of feeling coerced. Self-acceptance allows others to feel less pressured and more inclined to accept us. Ironically, the crippling need to be accepted had become an obstacle to acceptance.

Once free of the need to occupy myself, once I was willing to accept me and the moment I was in, once I loosened the grip of needing acceptance from others, I found I could make decisions for myself. If I was wrong, then it was mine. Nothing is set in stone except our gravesites.

The fact is we were born alone despite all the fuss around us. And we will die alone despite all the fuss. If we accept being alone, we can become free of the crippling need to belong to anything just to be part of something. Then I think it’s possible to become part of everything.

Or, like Buddha’s hot dog — one with everything.