寂寞—爱情的开始（英语）.doc

寂寞—爱情的开始（英语）我们为摆脱寂寞所做的一切从根本上说是存在缺陷的，因为我们不理解我们正在逃离的东西的本质其实寂寞也有它美丽的一面当你看到并承认这一点，学着以寂寞为乐时，你内心的某些东西便会开始慢慢发生变化当寂寞变成孤独时，自由便来临了，真正的爱情也来临了！24EN editor's note：All our efforts at escaping loneliness are fundamentally flawed, for we don’t understand the nature of what we are running from. There is something beautiful about your loneliness. And when you see that, when you acknowledge it, learn to delight in it, that’s when something shifts inside you. When your loneliness becomes aloneness – that is freedom! That is when you can truly begin to Love!When we are in the depths of our loneliness, what comforts us – what could possibly take us away from it? What, indeed? So often, it feels like there is no solace; like we are running from our own shadow. And it is true, in a way. There is no escape from being alone. We are always alone. But there is a way out of loneliness. All our efforts at escaping loneliness are fundamentally flawed, for we don’t understand the nature of what we are running from. There is something beautiful about your loneliness. And when you see that, when you acknowledge it, learn to delight in it, that’s when something shifts inside you. When your loneliness becomes aloneness – that is freedom! That is when you can truly begin to Love!Fragmentation and the search for wholenessAs Osho once said – the first thing is to acknowledge aloneness. Aloneness is our true nature; we can never, ever, not be alone. We come into this world alone, we leave the world alone. And in between these two, we are alone – but we frantically hide from it, run from it, pretend it isn’t true. I remember analysing an attachment style test in a psychology class once. It aimed to discover how secure we are in our relationships. One of the questions was: “Do you ever feel like you want to completely merge with another?”The room erupted into an awkward, hesitant burst of laughter at such a question. How absurd! – they seemed to be saying. But I remained silent. An old memory struck me, and I remembered feeling that same depth of loneliness, once, a long time ago. Or perhaps it never truly left me – an alienation so deep that the only way out truly seemed to be melting into another person. Feeling cut-off in the middle of a lunchtime crowd, feeling alone when cuddling with a girlfriend; always on the outside looking in at life. I remember glancing around at my fellow students. The look on their faces – it seemed like many felt the same way.This alienation is the universal dilemma of human existence – never at ease, never at home. It drives almost everything we do. Loneliness and separation is an intrinsic, permanent part of our ego. In the teachings of non-duality, the core of many religions and philosophies, the message is simple – we are all part of the infinite, ever-present, eternal One Life. We are all deeply interconnected and inseparable. The ego, then, is the universal illusion, the exaggerated feeling of “I”, and the root of all our solitude. For the moment we feel we are “I”, that is the moment we have created the “Not-I”, the other, everything else. We become a fragment, cut off from the rest of existence. We become a dot in this world, forgotten by God. This sense of fragmentation, for some – perhaps the ones who couldn’t laugh in the lecture hall – is conscious. It shows up as a deep and constant sense of not being whole, of not being enough. For others, those who laughed at the test, this sense is unconscious. They lack something, but they don’t know what it is. And so they seek, and strive, and struggle, yet all the time not knowing what it is they are trying to fill. More belongings, more sex, more status, more power, more recognition, more, more, more. Almost all their efforts stem from this drive for self-completion. But it is all futile – we are throwing our energies down a bottomless pit. That we are trying to fulfil is the very thing that is causing our lack.Romance – the new alcoholRomance is perhaps the most common cover-up for the sense of fragmentation. If we are lonely, it must make sense that we need a special someone! Logical and cold, like a business transaction. A boyfriend, a girlfriend, a lover, someone, anyone! We have reduced them to a mere cover up for our sorrows – no different from the misuse of alcohol, the noise of our television, or killing time on the phone until we can next be with someone – as if we have so much time to kill!Sex is the closest we can get to oneness on a physical level, and that is why it is so deeply satisfying. And when we peer deeper into our heart, fragmentation shows up as a need to attach, to cling, to melt and to merge. How many people are conscious of this lack? How common is this primordial sense of alienation? Common enough to show up on a standardised psychological test. And so we look for someone to take away that feeling. When we are with someone, we can take our mind off that background sense of disharmony. Suddenly。