And if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not doing it right.

“Loneliness. Loneliness. Loneliness, ahhhh, came kickin’ at my door.” - From ‘Maria’s Little Elbows’ by Sparklehorse.

I’ve been out socializing much more than usual of late, a situation I am very happy with, as for all my talk of enjoying alone time and doing solitary practices, I do love to be with people.

Yet, as the evening draws to a close and I make ready to part ways with the men and women I have spent it with, a lonely feeling creeps up on me. I have in the past spoken of people who feel this way, saying that it is a feeling created in order to continue socializing constantly, so as to cover up the fear of solitude of being with one’s own thoughts and feelings. This is clearly only partly true, and I have further insight about it to offer.

Being social creatures, we gain a sense of belonging and energy from being with other people. We’re all massive flows of the stuff, so naturally when we come together the energy flows between us and back and forth and everyone concerned feels invigorated. Then, as the time together ends, these energy flows are withdrawn, and if we have been relying on that energy coming from outside us instead of direct from the universe (it’s all gone very Taoist here, so my apologies to those who wonder what I’m talking about, bear with me), then naturally we feel at a loss, and that is loneliness. Similarly, there is a sense of addiction there, for when being alone and wanting company, it could be that you just want the energy people bring.

If you’re not up on the concept of energy in this way, think how when a happy person and a sad person come together, perhaps that sad person feels better, or perhaps the happy person comes away drained. This is the give and take that goes on, and if we aren’t outsourcing as well from the most abundant energy source in the universe - The Universe Itself - then these problems can easily develop.

Another way to look at it, is the difference between gaining approval or love from someone else, and with giving it to yourself. It’s wonderful to receive a compliment, but if we feel good, it isn’t necessary. If we feel bad, and don’t give ourselves any praise, then we become like starving children for the attention and acknowledgement of anyone, and we take what we can get (which might mean the odd punch or insult as well some praise).

There’s nothing wrong with this exchange of energy between people, so please don’t feel you need to keep it all to yourself (like any water body, it’ll grow stagnant if it isn’t moving), but instead delight in it. We share at such a deep level, how is it possible to be lonely at all!?

My advice (and I’m giving this to myself as I write it), is to get out among people if you’re lonely by all means, but keep your eye out for it becoming addictive (ie. you become unable to enjoy any solitary time at all). Remember to connect to the source of Life behind the images (just relax, breathe and feel yourself imbued with light flowing in and out of you). And if you still can’t shake that lonely feeling, really absorb yourself in whatever you’re doing - if there’s no “you”, there’s no loneliness.

A quick note to you all that Paulo’s blog, The Bonsai Experiment, has had a change of address as he changed his ISP and server access. His new wonderful URL is http://bonsaiexperiment.net - Update your bookmarks accordingly! (And if you haven’t been there yet, he talks of bonsai growing as a metaphor for life, and as such, has all sorts of interesting and amusing ideas and photos there).

It’s tempting to think that we have all the answers, and that our own viewpoint is completely accurate, but of course by nature of the fact that each of us are individuals and experience life through our own unique perspectives, this can never be so. There is not one truth, but many truths, and even these are subject to change.

Writing the sort of articles that I do, I often generalize things. This is the easiest way to appeal broadly to most people, but it is far from a complete system. For every rule there is an exception, and even when I speak from points of view that I believe are accurate when concerning other people generally, it stands to reason that not everything I say will apply to everyone, just as not everything I say will appeal to everyone.

A good conversation with someone, debating and offering personal opinions, can be very enlightening, if you are willing to be open. If you can hear someone and take on board what they are saying, weigh it up against the things you already think or believe to be true, and honestly evaluate the two to the best of your ability, then you can have the chance to grow. If you are so sure of yourself that you don’t even really hear what the other is saying, then your opinion has become a hardened shell, and you will miss the opportunity to further your growth by either adapting, further reinforcing, or discarding some of your viewpoints.

It is in this way that I often learn things. I speak from my own experiences and my own learnings, and so naturally there are things I cannot really know or relate to for certain. I do my best to keep my eyes and ears open, to observe, analyze and get a sense of people and how they work and how they react and what they believe, and apply that to broad rules or general pointers about what can be applied to all people, to life as a human. Part of the challenge is to ever increase that place of relation, so that I can relate and provide insight beyond my own experiences, beyond my own peer group, beyond my own social class, and beyond even my own society.

So, by all means, challenge me. If you think I’m wrong or your experience doesn’t agree with my perspective, say “Hey, Lew, what are you saying, man?” and maybe we can both learn something. The less a person feels the need to defend their position, the more malleable they allow their beliefs to be, the more they stand to gain and the easier it is to grow. And if writing these articles is as much to offer my perspective as it is to help people, then the richer my perspective can be, the better, for both sides equally.

To help people along the path, you have to know a little about the territory.

It is all well and good to live moment to moment, trusting that the next step we take will be towards our larger goals and vision, but often we want to do a bit more planning than that, if only so we know that we’re heading where we want to go. Viewed on its own, how would we know where that one step might lead? But viewed in the context of a greater goal, then it is easy to see that it is one step along the journey to that destination.

In the movie Bruce Almighty, a conversation between God (played by Morgen Freeman) and Bruce (Jim Carrey) shows the sorts of difficulties we can have. It went something like this:

Bruce: I just gave them what they wanted.
God: Since when do people know what they want?

This is the eternal difficulty. If life was as clean and crisp as “I want this” then go out and get it, this would be the happiest place in the universe. But somehow we get the idea that certain desires are wrong, or we have conflicting desires because we have conflicting parts of our personality, or we just get so damned confused about the whole thing that we don’t know what we want. It might be that we’re only guessing, that we’re only hoping that what we want will give us what we need, but we’ve got to start somewhere, and a direction is a direction, we can detour later if we find something better.

What I’m going to deal with right now is the problem of not knowing what you want. Now there could be any number of reasons that you can’t access this information, including that you simply don’t believe it’s possible to know what you want with any sense of clarity. The conscious mind, the rationalising, logical, linear-thinking mind, can have tremendous difficulty with this task because it isn’t really suited to finding the answers alone. That’s why we have two sides of our brain, they’re meant to work together, each doing what they do best, coming together to be a sum greater than its parts.

The key then, if you really want to know what you want, so that you can put down some good intention and good plans and just get moving in a direction to greater happiness and fulfillment, is to access this secret mind, this mind that speaks in symbols and dreams and urges.

One way to do this, is to draw. Ask a question, write it down, and then draw an answer. It takes a certain amount of knack not to get in the way of yourself too much while doing this, but my advice would be just to relax and play with it a bit, don’t take it too seriously. Consider it along the lines of a playful “what if I knew this” kind of way. Once you’ve drawn your answer, jot down what feelings come up, whatever springs to mind, and gradually move from that side of your brain to the more analytical one, to figure out what it all means and run with it a bit. Remember that while analysis can be very useful here, particularly in terms of creating plans of how to get to what you want, you might not be able to make perfect sense of it. It is enough that you want it, you do not always need a reason why. If you do, it means that a) you don’t really trust your own desires, which is understandable but not a way to be happy, and b) you want everything tied up in a neat little package with everything figured out and reasonable, which again is not a way to be happy, as the universe is a vast mystery.

If nothing else, I hope this process can shed some light on your problems and your coping mechanisms, and give you a next step and a place to flow your dreams into.

Don’t let the day get away from you, find the courage to move forward towards your goals and desires.

“Be brave, and save your day.” - From ‘Save Your Day’, by José González.

It sometimes happens that I lose all sense of purpose and meaning in my life. In short, I do not know what to do. I ask myself broad questions, “how should I spend my days?” and also more specific ones “should I do this, or that, now?”

This is indecision at work. It is boredom, restlessness and even apathy. If you don’t know what to do, you might feel like you don’t even want to be here. You might go back to bed, or try some other way to go unconscious or zone out.

Still, notice the language I used? That dreaded word, should, that is so telling of what processes are going on inside. It means I’m trying to figure it out, weigh up pros and cons, see what is right or wrong through logic and rationalisation. I am relying on my mind to know what to do, and I see that being a thinking machine, actually that’s not something it can do.

That of course answers my own question, it brings a solution to the problem. If my mind can’t be relied upon to decide on what to do, what can? Let’s think about the context. What to do is simply a function of the moment, so all that is really needed is awareness of the subtle flows of energy that are happening in the present time. We feel this, not think it, and the sensation is felt in the gut. That simple urge there says “this is what to do now”. In wondering what to do, I had seperated myself from the flow of life, and so access to this simple internal compass.

Finally, all I had to do was stop trying to think my way out of the situation, and instead feel my way into it. Sitting quietly, waiting for that urge to be felt in my belly, I did not have to wait for long. Then here I was, without judgement or second thought, in full feeling that this was where I was meant to be, writing these words to you. And before you get all uppity about loss of free will, this is just a river we’re flowing in here, it’ll reach certain points because it has a path to follow. It’ll wind and meander, rush fast or slow, but each moment will be perfect, and there’s no need to discriminate between here or there, upstream or further downstream. In fact, it’ll help if we stop worrying about whether what we are doing is right or wrong, trying to separate ourselves from it by becoming some “objective” observer, and instead just pay attention to the moment and be in it completely. That’s how to know what to do.

Being the fair-haired, fair-skinned gentleman that I am, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the sun since the earliest days when mummy and other media told me to make sure I don’t expose too much of my skin, to keep sunblock on, and to generally avoid the sun where possible. So, when the sun comes out in force in the summer, and I want to be out there enjoying it, I’ve always felt some sense of fear about it, the fear of getting burnt, and consequently my exposure to the sun on the hotter days has been very limited. This year has been different, however.

This year, I’ve decided to be very gentle, but very methodical, in helping my skin get accustomed to being in the sun more (the visible effects of which would be a golden-browning of skin and a distinct lack of sunburn). On with the suncream, out in the sun for a while (though not too long, keeping alert for any feelings of my skin roasting too intensely), and then ensuring I hydrate my skin well afterwards with some aftersun moisturiser, to help it retain whatever glow it’s taken on and remain healthy. I’ve also been eating many seasonal fruits, and also some tropical fruits, foods evolved in part to help the eaters to retain water better, to cool the body in the summer heat.

Two days ago, for possibly the first time, I felt no fear of being out in the blazing sun. I felt the sun warming my skin and had no fear of it burning or damaging me. Instead, I enjoyed it thoroughly, feeling it bring health, a kind of protective adaptation (to limit future burning) and a golden healthy glow to me. Wind caressing skin instead of t-shirt is a welcome sensation, and far cooler too.

What metaphor is this? As I see it, to have a respect for the sun’s power is important. It brings light and life to the planet. To embrace light, even if in incremental steps. To grow accustomed. To adapt slowly, in its own time. Whether we’re learning to run a marathon, or learning to play the guitar, slow steady steps are far more positive than trying for too much too soon, risking injury to self in body or in spirit. Walk before you run, the saying goes, and we crawled before we could walk too. But don’t forget how those first walking steps played out. We stumbled, we looked off-balance and as if we would fall, and we often did. But just look where we are today.