If you are Feeling Lonely, Forget those “Love Yourself” Mantras. Do This Instead.

Via Sara Kärpänen

“I don’t think anybody can fall in love unless they feel lonely.” ~ Trungpa Rinpoche

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Forget those “love yourself” mantras.

Forget those affirmations, self-help guides, stacks of chocolate, and wine.

Forget anything

that might ease your pain.

Forget anything

that will not make you sit alone with yourself.

Today, I understood the weight of the statement “make friends with your loneliness” and what it might mean. When sadness comes, we have to allow ourselves to feel it.

It doesn’t matter how long we have to sit with it. If we don’t, it will take us over, sooner or later. It will wipe us out, shatter us into pieces, without an anchor to grab, nothing to hold onto.

So when the tears are pushing through, let them drop.

Bathe in them, invite them for tea, make friends with them.

Don’t wake up and say, “You are okay.”

Instead ask yourself, “How are you, today?”

Without a filter

without a shelter

without a hug

without anything but your presence

without judgement

listen to it, like your best friend.

Be there. And listen.

Because when you sit there with the

loneliness, sadness, fear, boredom, restlessness, solitude

Something happens:

you are not alone anymore.

Relephant Read:

The Buddhist View of Loneliness as a Good Thing.

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Author: Sara Kärpänen
Image: With the permission of Ariel Majtas