Episode 125: Loneliness

The feeling of loneliness, which is familiar to many of us, can be a very vulnerable and slightly threatening feeling  •  Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized the value of relating to loneliness as well as the value of being in community  •  he said that without relating with your loneliness, you can’t really be in community in a way that’s healthy; it can just be people leaning on one another, and can therefore be knocked over very easily  •  but by developing a strong sense of oneself and accommodating fundamental loneliness, we can actually be in community in a much stronger and more loving way  •  there are certain things in this life we have to do all by ourselves  •  we are born alone, and we die alone  •  a deep-rooted loneliness comes baked into life itself  •  one way of accommodating the reality of loneliness is to take loneliness as an ongoing default position, rather than as a mistake or a failure; to view loneliness as a thread that runs through our life from the very beginning to the very end  •  but in order to accommodate the reality of loneliness, we have to actually get through the sometimes extreme pain of loneliness  •  showing up for our own loneliness can give us the courage we need to show up for others who are struggling with loneliness and abandonment.