Emotions are the roller-coasters of life. How would my life be if I can detach from my emotional body? Would that be freedom? Would that be flat, like a desert plain with no ripples, no valleys, no heights?
Who would I be if I left my emotional self on the shelf for a week, or a day or a lifetime?
I think about this and then I see how grateful I am for my emotions as without them my joy of yesterday would not have been. But when I am feeling as I do this evening, how to discover that gratitude for my emotion? This feeling that is palpable inside me – of emptiness – tinged with a hollowness.
I watch myself hurry to try to fill it or push it away – scrolling through Facebook. Stop – here is ‘addiction’. Considering a trip to the ‘wine shop’ – again – stop here is ‘addiction’. For what is ‘addiction’ but the filling of emptiness with something. That something called distraction.
Oh, let me go into this feeling or perhaps through it – truly searching out what it is. So I may better see who I am beneath my daily exterior being.
Look, Shazar. Who are you when you are alone? Who are you when you feel lonely? When the landscape ahead of you feels strange and not your own. When this land you are in is just out of reach of touch. Look, Shazar – look inside who is this, who is teetering on this gap?
I chose the gap. There is the cosmic humour.
I chose to put myself here, to remove myself from the familiar, the family, the lover, the friends, – my choice. Why?
To experience just this – to push myself to the edge so I can discover myself – the layers within.
And to discover that I am never alone, to unfold the immensity and depth of who I really am. Out beyond the small self. Out beyond the limits of the mind. There lies no thing – there lies the all and everything.
Emotion comes, emotion goes
the waves of the ocean ebb and flow.
Bliss, loneliness, fear, passion.
What of these waves in me
But signposts to the infinite
the land of my being
the truth of my soul
revealing the sands
where I am we.
Footnote on a lighter vein: A special friend of mine suggested that these feelings of deep aloneness that can be distressing are related to our ‘herd’ mentality. We need the mob of some sort around us! mmm I can relate to that.. “get out there on the street girl”.. there are plenty of folks here in India togive me the feeling of being in a ‘herd’!!
I understand well the feeling of loneliness and being alone. Sometimes a visit to the supermarket just to be in an environment where there are other human beings can ease the pain; just a few words to the checkout girl provides contact with another person, albeit fleeting and distant. To exist in the presence of another does more than ease our lonliness; it teaches us to be aware of the others needs and to adjust our own needs to make room for the other.
Thanks for sharing this Shazar, it’s inspiring. Mostly thanks for being you.