On Love and Loneliness

Dedicated to J. Krishnamurti and all of those who have ever wondered if flowers get lonely.

You stood alone in the darkness, light pouring from your eyes, penetrating into the unknown, sailing into the vast waters of uncertainty.  We explored the deep trenches of your wrinkles, canyons of wisdom flowing into the steeple of inquiry. Sages breathe while both alive and dead; you breathed the water directly out of the air.

We stepped delicately into the river of your life, the sail of awareness hinged to your constant presence. We discussed with you tomorrow, peered at yesterday’s shadow, and peeled away all emotional attachment to discovery.

During your greatest triumph, you were in love with being alone.

You cracked the shell of solitude, a fertile egg birthing truth. A soldier of action renouncing all that is contrary to freedom, you spilled your heart into our lives. You held us in your embrace, gushed forth as the Ganges, mouth opened, you were climbing in the downward fall. We yearned to discover how we could, as you, love being so alone…

To taste you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love, masked by the need for flavor.

To feel you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love masked by the need for communication.

To hear you, we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love masked by the need for attention.

To understand you we needed to discover that loneliness is none other than love…bare and naked, standing without protection, without shields or weapons.

Loneliness is none other than love made visible through sorrow and pain.

Loneliness is none other than love disguised in our need for relationship.

Loneliness is expressed through our need for each other, and in you we found that loneliness is needed for self-realization. For within the confines of our solitude we find the indivisible atom, the smallest particle, and the essence of our need.  In loneliness, we find you in love.

You loved loneliness.  Carried it with you as a feather tied to your heart.  You would occasionally remove it for us to see that you didn’t need it to fly.  We gazed you in the night sky.

Are the fireworks as captivating when you are by yourself?

Reflected in your eternal eyes, we saw the shell of sight and found that inside is the freedom for which we yearn. Freedom to love unconditionally, without fear of losing this view of paradise. For in paradise there is no comparison.

There is no view that one would rather prefer to have. In paradise, you are still in love, even while lonely.

In loneliness, the shell that keeps us confined is broken. Our isolation is no more. For in our solitude there is no shell, there is only the truth of our being, a shining interconnected reality toward all of creation.

To understand why we are never alone requires we put ourselves through loneliness. This is when freedom is found; in our greatest moment of surrender…our weakness…when it has all fallen apart and we realize finally that we can never be alone.

For loneliness is a perpetual state of ultimate freedom, of barren naked love.

~

Editor: Kate Bartolotta