A constant sea of flux : some reflections on loneliness and our guiding daimon.

When I think of how controlled our home life was growing up, its freeing in a way to be slowly busting loose. Today is very different to yesterday, but I have been up and out in nature with Jasper, sitting by the lake beach for a while watching kayak riders and paddle boarding women….

I must confess to crying a lot on the return walk to the car (but Hey! what is new?) I had just re read what James Hillman writes about loneliness as being a necessary and oh so common soul experience and not only being about isolation or feeling lonely. We all know we can feel lonely in a crowd and super lonely with unresponsive loved ones… It’s only now I am learning to sink into the experience and find ways to be with it..

Hillman writes that loneliness can be a complex mix of nostalgia, sadness, silence and a yearning imagination or pull towards another place we sense or feel exiled from. He sites the life of Judy Garland and how beloved her version of the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is and was for tens of millions of people, regardless of the fact her life with riddled with addiction, chaos, emotional mess and struggle. Hillman makes the case that it was Judy’s daimon or guiding spirit as well as her earthly purpose to be a channel for these feelings for many and I believe so many of us look to artists, singers, poets and performers in this way, they have the capacity through their work and gifts the capacity to touch us in that place of deep soul that we implicitly recognise and may find relief through.. That said often the hardest path we can find is not one that lies ‘over the rainbow’ but thick into the woods of this unpredictable world.

When I got back to the car today, thoughts of my sister were strong. I also felt the pull of death, I experienced a longing to pass over into the light , yearning for my soul and spirit to be embraced by the souls of so many loved ones who have passed, in fact I felt them there just beyond the veil loving me and witnessing my visit to my sister yesterday. Sadly, lately on earth it feels I don’t have many family in skin who are connected to me at all, they never get in touch.. I have tried since Mum died to reach out and in my desperate sadness I connected with someone online who offered me that promise of connection back in April 2018 (interestingly just prior to the Mars Pluto conjunction of that year). Each time I sent more money, there was another reason he could not come. And it went on. I cut it in October last year but he pulled me back in.. Anyway what is done is done and I know I shared about it yesterday but the pain is still rising up to be shed lately as Mars backtracks to exact square with Pluto over the next day or too.

I was crying about that too, today, as I cannot help but blame myself for being so stupid, so I had to ask for forgiveness for myself in prayer today.. God knows I just have to bear the truth, now he has disappeared since he knows no more money is coming his way. It stings to know I was lied to over and over and duped.. But then it occurs to me to just accept the truth…and see it as all a part of my path, part of my learning and to understand the yearning we all feel in various ways to ‘escape’ loneliness and be connected. The truth seems to be though that this sense of connection comes and goes, like all feelings, it is not a permanent thing and I know I will forever on this earth feel a bit homeless and as though this place (earth) is not my true home.

In his book Hillman makes the point that often our modern culture is too concerned with rising above, overcoming or the upward trajectory, to the point that depression and loneliness and feeling sad are seen as illnesses rather than just a part of what it means to for us, as souls and spirits to be trapped in matter undergoing certain transformative experiences of ‘growing down’ and living life. He also makes the point that the real challenge is to accept this ‘growing down’ and its attendant pains as necessary, not pathological or evidence of ‘fault’ or ‘error’; to accept the givens of this duality and work with it meaningfully, and cease the tiring task of endlessly squirming or trying to cowtow to lofty ideals that have no basis in grounded chaotic messy life.. It is a very interesting point he makes and I just want to end with this quote from his book The Soul’s Code, as I read it just a moment ago before leaving the park to come home and it was a truth that deeply resonated with me.

Desperation grows worse when we seek ways out of despair..

This is not to negate affirming actions we can take in the middle of depression, but it also seems that sometimes when we run try to run or medicate a ‘dark night of the soul’ we only to a profound disservice to our soul’s evolution… I know, for myself, I had to bear for many years with feelings of the most crippling nature and intense body symptoms that like a storm would blow up and refuse to abate at times making even functioning on any day impossible. I started to write and dream a lot during that time and those insights now fuel a lot of my writing.

I know now ways to regulate and take care, but I also feel the preciousness and ‘juice’ of those times, like earlier today when I experience that strong soul longing for those who have passed or experience those massive waves of soul movement and sadness.. I know the feeling of being a stranger on this earth comes and goes but I accept it more. I also know lots of people out there feel the same.

These days I try as much as I can to open myself to my own heart, there were times I blocked, defended, fought and run… I see other people carrying a banner for that way of dealing with past trauma but it doesn’t really work for me.. That said at times I may need to erect a boundary between me and someone sometimes, just for the purpose of serenity.. For what I am realising more and more lately is that I gain more sense of wholeness through embracing feelings of loneliness and being set apart while not attaching to them too strongly… If i let those feelings in and even the tears, they tend to just sweep through me in a wave, and as I surrender myself to ride that ocean I find it often carries me to somewhere good, may even be a harbinger for an outpouring of poetic expression…. Without the loneliness I WOULD lose touch with my guiding daimon and my life would be all the more meaningless and bereft without it.. Trying to ‘fit’ into society’s mold never really seemed to ever work for me. Trying to fill myself up with a relationship also has ended in tears many times. This doesn’t mean I don’t try to reach out and relate but that often I need to recognise that what I am really reaching for, does not lie outside of me.