Please share this Shift with someone who may be lonely today.
Are you feeling lonely?
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Hello, hello. Hope you’re doing well.
Let’s take a long deep breath to get started.
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Invite our attention fully into the present moment for the next few minutes.
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And shift loneliness today.
Life can be very lonely sometimes, can't it?
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It's not only about the perspective you bring to any given moment that relates to how lonely you feel.
Life cycles — regardless of your perspective.
So sometimes you're naturally more oriented to particular aspects of life.
One of those aspects of each of our lives is the human experience of being separate and feeling separate.
And therefore, potentially feeling particularly alone and lonely at certain times.
And, of course, life events can provoke loneliness too.
Experiences of loss, unrequited love, a bad day — it’s all part of most every human life.
When you drop deeply into presence though, it's very possible to reconnect yourself to life and shift your inner experience.
To me, that is the most obvious way to shift out of loneliness in the moment anytime.
And we’ll do that today together.
But it's also useful to think about another approach to shifting loneliness.
Think about this idea as a complementary approach to shifting into connection with life…
Putting your love into the world.
Let’s step inside and take another deep breath together.
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Feel silence flowing into and through you.
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Connect to that.
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One way to think about loneliness is to understand it as a reaction to not feeling love coming toward you.
That's why this this idea, this action — this activity of putting your love into the world — is so useful and important.
It is your ‘putting love into the world’ that is part of the cycle of feeling the love that is within you.
The challenge can be, especially when you’re feeling down sometimes, that it feels like you have to put so much love into the world in order to see and feel that love coming back.
But, it might be that the love that you're putting into the world is bringing love back to you in a way that you're not fully noticing — or that you didn't anticipate.
And that recognition — if you can see it — can also impact a sense of loneliness that may be underlying some idea that you're putting love in the world and you're not feeling it back.
Putting love into the world is expressing the love in you, and therefore it connects you to love in your life.
When you do that, and you listen closely and feel deeply, you’ll often feel that life is loving you back.
Let’s do that today.
But first, here are a few ways to address loneliness anytime —
Dropping into presence fully, (i.e., the most obvious and fastest way to shift loneliness).
Putting your love into the world, (i.e. make sure you're doing that to participate in shifting yourself out of loneliness).
Noticing whether love may in fact be coming into you, but you are looking for it in a different form than it is appearing.
Being very realistic by understanding that things often take time, and feelings in your life ebb and flow like the seasons. So sometimes you may need to keep putting love into the world for a while before you feel it coming back to you.
I’m not a big fan of pretending that there's not genuine, painful, authentic, and accurate feelings of loneliness that we each experience throughout life.
Loneliness is part of our lives.
But I am suggesting that shifting out of that experience in the ways that we're talking about today — those that feel authentic to you — is a great practice and definitely helps.
So how are you putting love into the world?
And, is it possible that it's coming back to you (if you're feeling lonely) in a form that you weren't anticipating — but nevertheless in a beautiful form?
Maybe sit with those questions as we dive in the silence for a minute together.
Let’s take another long, deep breath.
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And another.
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Think about this form of love in your life:
The fact that you are a miracle — you're a living miracle, buzzing with life.
When I say ‘living miracle’ some people get turned off by that language.
What I mean to communicate is something very practical and scientific though.
It’s that you (i.e. your body) are literally composed of roughly 30 trillion cells that are buzzing you into life each moment.
And your body, your cells, are completely dependent upon and connected to your environment, including the air that you breathe in — the air that feeds you.
The oxygen that gives you the breath of life.
So you are miraculous and never alone in that sense.
You are fully connected to life, and to your environment which is part of life.
Can you feel a shift within you when you come more deeply into awareness of those facts?
How does that awareness shift loneliness for you?
Just notice any inner changes that may have occurred for a few moments.
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Does acknowledging those truths help you see love coming back to you in a different way than you were expecting, or hoping for?
Let’s sit with all that for a few moments.
Spend some time in pure silence before I talk you through entering silence through your body specifically.
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Good.
Now place all your attention into your body — 100% of your attention.
Notice your body’s buzzing aliveness.
If it helps you connect to the buzzing feeling within you, you can squeeze your thumb really hard — squeeze your left thumb for three or four seconds.
Then release your thumb as you notice the sensations that arise when you release — the buzzing aliveness of your thumb.
Doing that can help you pick up the strong buzzing of you.
Then feel that buzzing, that tingling life, in your entire hand.
And then allow the feeling to spread from your hand to your entire body.
That trick can help you pick up the buzz of you — your body buzz.
What is that buzz?
That's you, alive, aspect of life, never alone, but sometimes lonely.
Feel that.
Sit in that feeling state and see what arises for you for the next minute.
All your attention feeling your body and listening to life.
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Perfect.
Did anything come up?
As I listened, I heard a question: How are you putting your authentic love into the world?
Is it flowing through you as a reaction — as gratitude to being aspect of life, to being alive and connected to everything?
How is that awareness flowing through you into the world today?
Is it flowing in the form of gratitude, or care, or love, or sensitivity, or your art maybe?
How is it flowing today?
Can you notice that within that flow — within that giving of yourself — you are more deeply connecting to life?
A lot of times coming deeply into that awareness absorbs and subsumes any sense of loneliness for me.
Is it doing that for you today?
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Anyway, food for thought, and for feeling better :)
Let's take another couple more deep breaths and say goodbye for now.
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Remember, you are always welcome here.
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Let’s set an intention to remain present for the rest of the day.
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Nice.
Have a great one.
Stay present,
Sean
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