Facing the void

 If at any time you have felt that sense of utter loneliness, or if you have ever consciously, deliberately, allowed yourself to become aware of it, you will know that you immediately want to run away, to escape from it. You go to the temple, worship a god, plunge into perpetual activity, talk everlastingly, explain things away, or turn on the radio. We all do this, as we well know, if we are all conscious of ourselves. Now to realize that escape in any form will never satisfy this urge of self-fulfillment, to see that it is insatiable, a bottomless pit, you must be aware of it totally, which means that you must need to see the truth that escapes have no reality. You may escape through god or though drink, but they are both the same. One is not more sacred than the other. 

 

You have to understand this hidden urge and go beyond it, and you cannot understand and go beyond it if you have not tasted that extraordinary loneliness, that darkness, which has no way out, no hope. Hope comes into being when there is despair. A mind is in despair only because it is frustrated in this hope. To understand this deep urge, this hidden want, you must perceive it totally, as you might perceive a tree or a flower. Then you can go beyond it, and once beyond it, you will find there is a complete aloneness, which is entirely different from being lonely. But you cannot discover that state of complete aloneness without that deep urge to fulfill yourself to escape from loneliness.

  (J. Krishnamurti, Reflections on the self)

 

Hmm, facing the void isn’t fun. Spirituality is supposed to be love, peace and beauty, right? That’s why many of us cycle for years. When things are good, we obviously get it. When things are not so good, there must be someone or something interfering, right? Well, we have only ourselves to answer to when it comes to the failed reception of the divine energies. It’s easy to get a conscious understanding of what spirituality is all about, it’s harder to let go of all the conflicted energies humanity has been carrying around for eons. Yet, that’s what the heavy lifting is all about, facing our subconscious in all its depth. J. Krishnamurti did a fine job describing the escaping and the less pleasant process it takes to get to the other side. He should have mentioned though that once we make it past the loneliness, “alone-ness” awaits. Suddenly we are “allOne”, like we have always been.