As we mature and develop, we naturally grow beyond conventional identities, and eventually beyond identities themselves. First, we shed the conventional ones of gender, age, social norms, and so on. Eventually, our identification may go out of identities altogether, finding ourselves as awake emptiness allowing a fluidity of any and all identities.
Increasingly lonely
As this happens, we find ourselves increasingly alone, at least in a certain way…
- We cannot find belonging or comfort through group identities or by blindly following social norms (nor in breaking them)
- Our views and experiences are often not aligned with conventional views
- We don’t play the game of narrow identification anymore
- We don’t play the game of splits so much, seeing me as right and you as wrong
- The typical human drama, with all its variations, has less and less charge for us (which sometimes makes us dull, although understanding, companions for those caught up in it)
- We have to stand on our own feet
This process has many rewards, and we do find companions on the way. Freed from much of the drama, there is a new clarity and new aspects of existence and our human life opens up to us.
And deepening sense of belonging and connection
And although it may leave us lonely in some of these ways, not being able to believe in group identities and less caught up in the human drama, it also brings a deepening sense of belonging and connection.
As I learn about what I see in you in myself, as more and more of what I am is included in my conscious view on myself, I deepen into my own humanity, which is also our shared humanity. I find myself in you, and you in me. We are perfect mirrors for each other. There is a deepening into the sweetness, and sometimes pain, of our shared humanity.
And as identification goes out of identities altogether, finding myself as awake emptiness and form, and as emptiness as the Ground of it all, there is another deepening into intimacy. This one, as an intimacy with my life, with Existence itself. First, as a growing sense of no separation, as oneness. And then through the falling away of the core identity as a separate self, allowing wide open space for anything arising, without any sense of separation.
This is the deep homecoming. The final release of any sense of I and Other.
Increasingly lonely on the surface, and increasingly at home in the depth
So there is a process of being increasingly lonely on the surface of it, in society. Not being able to wholeheartedly play along with the games of separation anymore.
There is a process of a deepening and more intimate connection with oneself and others, through a widening embrace of who I am as a human being.
And a process of any sense of separation falling away, leaving only the wide open space for anything to arise, the void already and always allowing it all.