I often don’t understand my spirituality, do I feel alone?
How often do you hear and read that enlightenment can only be found in oneself, people become hermits, take vows of silence, go into “foreigners” and withdraw into rituals. The picture that the Catholic Church paints of her Savior (deep in the minds of mankind) is that of a lonely person on the cross. The profiles of every prophet show how aloof these heralds of a new truth were presented – knowledge separates – one might think.
You see! All lonely! Logical, right?
If someone has knowledge that is inaccessible to others, then somehow they have to be alone. That seems all too understandable. But it is precisely here that we commit a decisive mistake in understanding. Because the knowledge of the truth that enlightenment holds ready port for port is precisely the knowledge of love. So it turns out that the view that an enlightened one, or someone on the way there is lonely, is just a reflection, a projection of our own loneliness.
Lonely in the chaos of the world?
A somewhat confused story. There is someone standing on an island, the ground dry, no vegetation, yet he has always defended this island down to the blood. On his island he wages a daily struggle for survival, for the daily food, he even has to pay rent for his refuge. New waves of fear, guilt, and sin are constantly rolling in. And time is running out. Tempus fugit. There are other islands around him, but he cannot reach them, even if it sometimes seems so.
A light on the horizon
What is so twisted about the story: The person on this, his individual island, in his dry garden, sees this light on the horizon. It comes from the bright white sail of a magnificent ship that is cruising on the sea of love that surrounds his little island. And what does our islander think? “What must this ship feel lonely!” Does a shiver run down your spine too?
But how do I turn it around – do I feel alone with an overwhelming secret?
Lonely and alone – these are two more differentiations – from which we fundamentally want to keep our distance. The crux of this question, this argument is the word „secret“. The simple fact is that love knows no secrets, nor is it a secret itself. The path of spirituality, the path to enlightenment, is the path of love, is this ocean of gentle care that surrounds us – and the further we progress, the clearer it becomes to us – what we have until then, in our blindness of the chaos remained hidden.
What kind of love would that be, what kind of enlightenment that tries to make a secret of itself?
True religion knows no secret, no magic. The path to another system of thought, which is not based on the confusion of the experienced world, but rather means the path to exclusive, absolute love, is open to everyone. It is not necessary to chastise yourself, to follow any magical rituals, to know any formulas, or to increase any materials.
Does the knowledge reach us?
Whoever only invites love, who calls it, will receive an answer. For this it is neither necessary to celebrate certain rituals known only to the “initiated”, nor to learn the catechism by heart. The point here is simply to recognize that we live in an absolute love, seem to own our island here. As an island separated from the sea of this love, only slightly wetted, humidified. We are afraid of the sea.
Is love all encompassing?
When we acknowledge solitude, the fact that creation is love, we acknowledge its absolute, all-embracing nature. We recognize that our island must therefore be a fantasy, in its solitariness, that it is forged from thought fragments that are based on prejudices, judgments, evaluations, rules and manipulation. What we feel, see, taste, hear, think – is an illusion.
A daring step on a golden rock?
Here it is again – this step into an abyss that leads to a secure footing on a golden rock. (A parable from Zen) If we use the thought system that we have learned as an absolute must, as a basis for survival, if we replace this thought system with the truth – namely love – if we only ask for it in the beginning – the knowledge comes us. Door by door. Unstoppable.
Absolute love cannot know loneliness
Anyone who consciously embarks on this path, willing to learn, will notice how any feelings of loneliness and loneliness easily dissolve. Love means compassion, means forgiveness, means the negation of all differences, ultimately means the mental dissolution of the opposite as a body – towards one’s own self in solitude. What you do to your brother, you do to yourself. You will do him love.
Conclusion
Love, even in its smallest aspect, in a reflection no matter how tiny it appears, is always all-encompassing and completely whole. Our thought system, (our ego) that always seeks error and meaning in the outside, is built on the completely crazy basis of dualism. So we are seldom and mostly not at all able to recognize love in its entirety, to see it. Love dissolves this framework, this foundation, this web that blindly sustains us, replaces it – with itself.