Feelings Of Loneliness: A Sign Of The Times

Am I just imagining it, or are people actually ignoring me? I have no doubt that this is part of an issue that is pressing me greatly. My external life is reasonably calm but inside chaos reigns - thoughts and feelings relating to trust, betrayal, co-dependency, independency, loneliness, wondering whether people are competing about who is the most spiritual and ahead of others, being treated with nonchalance, being ignored, and worrying about what I am doing wrong? The days are gone when no one would disturb my peace of mind and I would just sail away with a clear conception of the reasons behind a confrontation. As it is now, I am having nightmares over relationship issues and waking up with the most excruciating anxiety that takes hours to clear. That I am just resuming my book project again after months of other concerns, probably adds to the sense of stage fright. I have to get it just right. I know I can do it but the scope of it all is overwhelming.

I have deep feelings of loneliness. Part of it may be that this time of year, I have often had company with which I have been able to go places and experience new things. Believe it or not, but summer is only now starting and I know that I must go out to be by the sea for a while before I resume my writing project in the late afternoon. The cliffs, the salty air and the water help to clear the aura. It is quite clear to me that nothing much can happen in my life until large parts of the project have been completed. I know that it is crucial that I try not to distract myself with worries regarding other people and their issues. Why assume that their unwillingness to interact with me is something personal? However, I do feel affected by it and can only conclude that there are areas in me that still hesitate to trust in other people's benevolence and where my worries about how to deal with others is still an issue. I look at groups that gather and share encouraging words and sentiments, and I feel a pang of sadness. I have been questioning whether who I am today really is bad enough for people to shun me. Maybe what I need to do is stop looking for like minded people and just accept that I don't fit in anywhere, at least not while I am still healing.

I believe my greatest learning phase is over - but I am now talking about the things that I needed to experience in order to be the catalyst that I need to be in the future. Thus I have reason to believe that things will indeed become much better in the future if I can only crawl across the threshold. Despite many difficult experiences this spring and summer I do now have a greater belief in being helped from above. Somehow my childhood feelings of inadequacy have stuck to me in the most annoyingly stubborn manner. My anxiety may be due to collective energies but it may also be a symptom of deeper processes that occur in my sleep, and they are very much connected to fears of relying on other people versus the fear of having to rely on myself alone (which is a limiting experience on the emotional and physical level). What I feel is that I have enough of loneliness and could use some nice, shared activities with others - and I do have to stress the 'activities' part because that's what's lacking the most in my present life. For many, being by themselves is blissful. Well, I don't mind being by myself but certainly not all of the time! In the connection to other people there is the element of sharing that is in my view just as valid as enjoying one's own company and creativity. When both are prevalent in equal proportions, there is harmony. Would you not agree?

I often refer to Karen Bishop's energy alerts(http://www.whatsuponplanetearth.com/latest.htm) as they are mighty comforting. In the 1st part of the recent energy alert she says it's not uncommon to feel panicky and very much alone these days. According to her, part of it is a desire for a real sense of unity which has not been prevalent before. She also says that you might feel invisible because your energies are not aligned with that of others around you. In general, things have not settled in accordance with the higher frequencies yet, so they appear stressful and chaotic to those who are sensitive enough to pick it up. I think this is how it is with me, however in practice many old fears and disappointments cause hesitation in me as well. I can't wait to see more altruism all around, but I am unsure of what exactly I need to do in order to attract it. Truth to say I don't see things in quite that simple a way, so I feel that some or most of the lack that I see really IS there (those who see things, see things). On the other hand I know that focusing too much on it is detrimental to myself, and may tilt my life further in the direction of more loneliness.

Nothing else occurs to me except that I have to let go of my wish for true soul connection (if I can figure out how), and accept that what may come as a result of it comes as designed by the universe - it may be good or bad from my subjective point of view, but it will be real and honest. Many wish to shoot the messenger of bad news. Well, I don't really have bad news but I don't have good ones either, so I guess I get ignored... I realize that people rather do that than go through the effort of helping me figure out where the trouble is. After all it may just be a sign of the times and very much in line with Karen Bishop's description of the symptoms that occur during such dramatic changes in the collective mind. I do wish that people would share a little more about what is going on with them and not fear bringing out the truth of it all. I have noticed that many on this site are cut off from other spiritually minded people and that is one of the main reasons they hang out here a great deal. Sometimes I wonder if I am just trying too hard to fit in with spiritual online communities too.

Artwork: "Deep Cleansing", collage on paper by author, copyright 2008

When Light Hits The Shadow

These are some thoughts about the nature of our Shadow Self from early 2007:

When you open up your heart some more, the light of consciousness hits the shadows in the subconscious mind and you can see so much more clearly what heaps of rubbish have been collected there in the dark over the years, over the decades, over the centuries even... The Shadow is in Jungian terms the part of you that contains denied feelings and thoughts. It may take ages to clear up. And meanwhile you have to struggle with all the negative feelings not only about yourself, but also about the other people who act as your mirror, and about the world in it's sad, sad state of misery and chaos. I am sure that out of the chaos comes new order, that is I believe that old physical matter and the more abstract energies are being transformed creatively into new forms, and that that is the divine order of things. Still...

I'm struggling to resolve a conflict between loyalty and compassion towards another human being and a suspiscion that I will never reach a state of equanimity if I continue to receive criticism from this person. Time and time again I have to brace myself and pick myself up and remind myself that I am not as bad a person as I am being told that I am. Mindgames and a weird manipulative way of twisting things around has become a part of my life, and I never thought it would. When someone close to you is dragging you in the mud, should you then cheer and say "YES! I get to work on my shadows now!", or should you say "NO, I deserve to be encouraged and treated with kindness so that I can start to blossom?". The person that is supposed to be my mirror is shifting shape from one day to the next. Is it me or the image who is starting a movement? Which one of us is the one who is truly coldhearted, arrogant, selfish and stupid? What does it say about me? I am willing to work with my own shadows. But it gets so tiring to always be taking responsibilty for all that goes wrong, to be always the one who has to fix a reactive behaviour. Because I'm supposed to be the one who has the wisdom and the inner tools and the time and the motivation. This is indeed a dark night of the soul.

A psychologist told me once that loyalty is just an excuse for not becoming independent of other people and that loyalty only forces you to put up with things you shouldn't have to put up with. Hm, I don't know. To me it's more that you put up with things that you'd like to run away from, but you do it because you don't always put yourself first. And you don't always put yourself first because you see the other one as just as valuable an individual as yourself. But when does loyalty become martyrdom? On the other hand, what would the world look like without loyalty?

My definition of the Shadow, on shadow work, and how to integrate the shadow with the conscious mind

These are thoughts have formed throughout the years. I am not pretending to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist, although some psychology belonged to my education.Some 15 years ago, I read a small book by Jung and "Meeting the Shadow" by Zweig&Ambrams. It made a lot of sense to me. All the things that are past karmas (possibly future ones too) and not known to the conscious mind, as well as repressed experiences from one's present life, are stored in the subconscious mind - in the form of energy ("clumped" or "stagnated" maybe.)

I understand the unconscious to be, vaster, collective in nature. So if we start do dig into that realm, then it can be quite a bit to chew. I believe some people only deal with a few issues in a lifetime. Others are maybe here to clear it all out. I don't see any other way to gain freedom, since this subconscious material is making us be reactive in an automatic response type of way. As a result of evolution, a human being would eventually want to become more conscious and aware of his/her actions. Ok, you can witness one's automatic reactions but your are still not fee unless you are exposing these to the conscious mind (maybe one follows the other). It means you need something to trigger it big time so that you really see that there is a problem. So the idea of letting the feelings come out and befriending them would be more or less the same as making them conscious. However, if we still don't get in touch with the root problem then there is no or little change. Maybe there is some key issue in a person that once it has been exposed, will open up the rest of the garbage bin so that there is no more obstructions for the energies to flow. I believe that deep thinking is also important, there's a reason we have the faculty of a reasoning mind, so that we can make sense of our experiences rather than be overwhelmed by them. By seeing the patterns and understanding their nature, we are able to integrate the emotional self with the mind. I'm not sure the terminology is comprehensive enough to understand these things? I think all this worked for me quite well until I went into that relationship and got all stressed and screwed up emotionally. So I have no more guidelines as to how to manage my strong emotions except to put up with them and try and keep them under some kind of control (not suppressing but containing them). One important thing to consider, as far as what I believe, is that the Shadow distorts our perception of reality so that we cannot see it the way it really is.

Both things that we would generally speaking consider good, as well as bad things, can be part of the Shadow. For instance in my case, love has been suppressed to some deeper level of my being. I was never able even to fall in love. It was completely incomprehensible to me. By allowing mysef to become dependent of someone, I opened up the love thing. It was starting to clear out but it took me years before I felt certain things in my heart (the energycentre) that I could recognize as "love" and "compassion". It also helped to get a pet, because I could immediately see the response from the cat when I was giving love to him. This interaction was crucial. But I don't know if that's what I need from a man too. A more obivous and direct mirror. Or maybe it's now supposed to be more subtle and complex?

Artwork: "The Shadow", mixed media by author, copyright 1997