How many times have you lied in order to ward off loneliness? We can lie by pretending to really care for someone when all we want is a little company, i.e.; "I love you." And when we find someone more interesting, we lie again to end the old relationship, i.e.; "I just want to be friends now, Okay?"
We can lie with our eyes, with what we write, with our body language, and of course with our words. We mostly lie to ourselves, however, and this is why all lies catch up to us sooner or later. A person that lies, or a person that is lonely, is a person that is confused about life.
When we look closely at what causes loneliness and lies, we can see that it involves a lack of stimulation. When we are born, we come complete with a battery of sense organs. We can feel things, taste things, smell things, see things, hear things, and think about things. Together, these feelings form a perfect storm when all of our senses are stimulated exquisitely by a close relationship. When the relationship ends, however, all this stimulation is lost and we feel devastated. So is it the person that we miss, or the stimulation? Apparently, it is the stimulation, because as soon as we find someone or something new, everything is cool again. So, what is more important; our need for stimulation, or our need for people? The two are closely related.
Some people don't need other people for stimulation. They have their research, their profession, or some other pastime that keeps their mind busy. Others need people, but not people who bore them; they need people who stimulate them. Boring people usually don't have many friends, and when someone rejects our friendship, that hurts. Therefore, subconsciously fearing that we will become boring people, we might spend an entire lifetime trying to live up to some kind of ideal of a being stimulating. If we lie to ourselves that we are not boring, when in essence we may be quite boring, we introduce great stress in our lives, because we will do most anything to keep from being hurt.
If we are actually and hopelessly boring to other people, which means that we readily absorb and enjoy their stimulations but dont give any back in return, the imbalance eventually causes disassociation. If we could become comfortable with this disassociation and not hurt by it, there would be no problem, but since we feel loneliness when disassociated or without friends, we set ourselves up for a tremendous dilemma!
Imagine, however, if magically you were no longer held hostage by loneliness. Wouldn't that be a tremendous freedom? You would be your own master, so to speak, and could discover new aspects of life that didn't involve merely being stimulated or stimulating others, which involves almost all of our waking energy! Stimulation is insatiable; you must constantly feed it. Stimulation is a monster we create that if not fed eats its creator.
Think about this; If you no longer required stimulation, which is ravenous and leads to drug addictions, sexual addictions, and a battery of painful choices; and needed neither people nor pastimes to satisfy your need for this passionate stimulation; or better yet, if you could be completely content without stimulation of any kind, wouldn't this open up an entirely new world for you, a world grounded in something so different from what you are presently experiencing? Wouldn't you then find a great depth within yourself, and find that there is so much more to life than you are allowing yourself to presently see?
If we can get over this obsession for stimulation, three problems in our life would be solved forever; hurt, loneliness and lying. If we no longer feared loneliness (and fear is the basis of lying), we would be free to get past these shallow relationships, as well as moving beyond shallow, fleeting stimulations that must be repeated constantly, hurting us and robbing us of so much energy that could be used to free our souls.
Whenever life gets you down, remember this article. There is so much more to discover about yourself. No heart is boring; no person is less than another.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
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