Loneliness, part II

My solitude at this point is two-fold, both spiritual and personal. The disaster of my last relationship revealed how serious I am about loving seriously, how much I would enjoy the deeper commitment of true love, a partner both in life and soul-searching.

I've come to see myself much more clearly though, and I can be more honest about the kind of person that I am (and am not). My dedication to being myself (which I identify most strongly through my spiritual practice) has given me a new sense of personal power, purpose, and guidance.

I want to be unabashedly wholly myself and I require a partner who can accept, move with, and love all that this entails. Until I meet such a person, my heart is a silent drum and my life a compressed ball of vibrating stillness. I used to be afraid of that kind of aloneness, perhaps due to my mother's death and family's deterioration, perhaps because I didn't like myself enough. I needed validation of my self-worth.

In any case, I see two benefits arising from this new path of solitude. First, in the quietness I can focus a lot of energy on my internal work. I have space to really devote myself to my discipline - yoga, meditation, chi kung, purification, cleansing, harmonizing - in order to continue raising the subtlest vibrations of intensely loving, compassionate, joyful attention. In this realm of almost spiritual chastity, I can sublimate the powerful compulsions of gross sexual energy by redirecting that force up the spine. Once this kundalini awakening is complete, spirit and sex inseparably wed in wholeness, there will be "no edges to my loving," as Rumi says, and many conflicts of desire can be harmonized into direct and precise action.

Solitude also protects me from sexual vagary, for the moment. It prevents me from wasting time, energy, or tears getting trapped in unhealthy relationships. The woman that I love is quite unique, precious, radiant, extraordinary, rare. I have met many people who barely deviate from the mainstreams of culture. And though I sometimes meet kindred spirits, of some degree or another, the chances of personal compatibility, let alone love, are appropriately minuscule. So when we meet, there should be nothing which prevents me from recognizing, calmly, clearly, with an open heart and no agenda save being myself, who she truly is.