Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

I am lonely.
I’ve made this confession before.
I am lonely, but loneliness is not my destination.
It’s not where I build my house. 
Loneliness is not my home, nor is it even where I like to set up camp, but I have to travel there sometimes. 

Loneliness is simply one pole on a continuum.
It is an essential part of my spiritual journey. 
I would even argue it is an essential part of any spiritual journey. 

This world is hellbent on connection, or at least the illusion of it.
Connection with other humans is important, even essential. However, divorced from the awakening to self and spirit that can only happen when one holds space for loneliness, real connection will forever remain an illusion. 

When I stop pacifying loneliness with the illusion of connection—fostered often by the very device I am writing this on—and allow myself to sit silent, still, and lonely, I sense a genuine readiness to move on the continuum away from loneliness and toward peace, shalom, and wholeness.

Or maybe wholeness is a word overused and misunderstood. 
Maybe oneness is a more accurate way to describe the pole on the continuum opposite of loneliness.

Oneness.
Unity with God is where I want to live.

But, while I’ve sometimes glimpsed this holy communion, there are still many times when I can only echo the words of the psalmist who says, 

“...the only friend I have left is Darkness.” – Psalm 88:18 (MSG)

But in the company of my friend, darkness, I’m learning to listen. 

Or, at least, I’m trying. 

Instead of trying to light the darkness with the glow of flickering pixels, I’m learning to close my eyes and sit still in the void. 

I’m learning to allow myself to feel what I feel.
I’m learning to be honest with myself and name my hurts.
It’s the only way I’ll ever become whole.
It’s hard.
Being fully me isn’t easy because it means being honest about my pain.
It’s scary to allow myself to name and acknowledge my wounds.
It’s hard to look at my scars and remember what caused them.

Pain hurts, but burying it has done nothing for me but perpetuate loneliness.

No, this isn’t where I spill my guts and share my most painful hurts for all the world (or at least my 100-ish readers) to read.
No, that kind of intimacy is… well, intimate.
Like so many other things, oversharing is just another way to create the illusion of connection and intimacy, and illusion is not the goal.
Oneness… unity with God is the goal.

No, I’ll reserve the gory details for my old friend darkness.
A few people sit on the edge of my loneliness. They wait patiently there for me, ready to walk alongside me toward peace, but even they aren’t invited into the deepest part of my wounds. My deepest pain, trauma, and scars… my loneliest spaces are reserved for my friend, darkness, who knows how to sit with me in them, perfectly silent and still. There, with darkness at my side, I can do the inner work of listening for the still, small voice of the one in whose image I was made. Darkness holds the space for me to do the inner work, but it doesn’t try to force me to build a house and stay there.
Staying lonely isn’t the point, nor will it ever be.
Loneliness is not the destination, but loneliness is an important place to visit on the journey of becoming whole.