I'm in pain, therefore I write

That deep loneliness.

You are all alone there; no one has any idea how you are feeling, what you are experiencing. Everyone else is there, but just a part of the cinema, the stage, the story you are experiencing. Collectively, they are all objects in relation to what you are experiencing — your feelings, pains, sufferings, joy and happiness — everything is arising in you. How can you take anybody there to experience what you are experiencing? How can you bring someone there to show what you are seeing?

The dreams you just had — of all the people and the houses you grew up in, your very childhood, little big gossip and stories — are all gone, all now part of the past. How can anyone go into that to see it with you again? Even if you bring someone there, they will be part of that scene, one of the objects, still separate from you. They will see you and your surroundings and be absorbed into their own understanding, their own experiencing — never the same understanding you are going through. So even if you could, magically, pull someone there — into that very scene, that very existence — you are still all alone.

Can you merge the people you love most into yourself — two hearts into one, maybe three or four or five; all those minds into one, and all the sensory apparatus into one — and experience a moment of time all together, as one, and feel not lonely? Even then, the experience will be based on the memory and impression that made all of them individual in the first place, as compared to you. That merged state, that hive mind, that melted heart will have a totally different existence, one that is not really you — a dissolved individuality has nothing in common with you being you. There is just no way anyone else can have the same sip of a moment of space and time as you are sipping it.

Soaking into the same rain twice is impossible — every moment is a new drop, and all the people who are there will see you experiencing each drop in its totally new shades, tones, and depths.

How alone, how deeply alone you are — no language can come any closer to transmitting that experience, that emotion you are going through; not even remotely close.

And that is all there is, as far as the outer world is concerned.

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I wake up most days from dreams of my vivid past. Many of my loved ones left their physical bodies a long time ago… And those who are still here have no idea how my emotions, my feelings, arise from moment to moment — as I remember them, the fallen ones, whom we deeply love. Collectively, we shared the same nostalgic story of belonging and togetherness, affection and warmth, hopes and dreams of a happy future, at that point in time. But now, as those stories slowly fade away in space and time, we share very little of them — and so very little can we express or talk about them. Sometimes a few lines come, some past events from here and there, some words — but that's all there is. Nothing touches the core experience of what each one is truly going through.

So an experience as profound as the death of a beloved one — when you go through it — you are still deeply, all alone. No one will ever understand, will ever be able to experience even a tiny shade of your emotional journey, any shade of your collective thoughts, the collective colours of your melancholy.

Happiness or melancholy, numbness or overwhelming emotional soaking — you will have no one around to soak with you. Somebody might be there beside you, tapping your shoulder, assuring you that they are with you, that they understand, that they feel you — but all those gestures will feel purely empty, so superficial. You might be grateful that they are there, but that will never be enough. You want to speak with all the depth of your emotions and sorrows, but language becomes such a disturbance… Every word you utter comes out poorly, empty, carrying nothing of the depth and significance of your totality of emotion and pain.

There is no comfort in those words. You are just alone. Painfully alone — if only you could realize it in that moment, if you could truly see it. Being with anyone in such a moment creates further obstacles, further barriers to the realization — that you are all alone — in the totality of your journey. You begin to think that this other person beside you has now joined you in your journey — but if you are really conscious enough, and not fooling yourself… you still see: you two are two galaxies apart.

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This is why, rather than looking to share my inward feelings, emotions, and thoughts with somebody else — when I learned to stop seeking, and started simply to be with it — slowly, a new kind of sharing happened.

Sharing my aloneness with myself.

I began to understand the difference between aloneness and loneliness… The difference between seeing — watching — absorbing, and escaping. It was tremendously painful in the earlier days; such overwhelming emotional and physical pain absorbed my whole being… But the more acceptance came, the more I started to drop the expectations of being understood, of being felt by another dear person, by a friend, or even by family — a new kind of light began to arise.

That loneliness slowly started to cease, and a feeling of aloneness began… As time moves, as I move through time, all emotions — pain, nostalgia, moments of happiness — collectively begin to rotate in a grand wheel of space and time. There, some colours fade; some new colours of emotion, impression, thought, and movement arise in me — and I begin to see it all in that one whole, with more and more clarity.

This very seeing slowly, slowly drops the seeking part of me, drops the escaping urge in me — slowly the cinema stays as cinema, and I, the ever-alone watcher, stay as the watcher. The love of the dead ones and the love of the living are now all part of the same wheel, the same cinema — which is never me, never was. Watching is all I could ever do, and ever did — yes, I see my body and mind played a role there too, but now even that is very distant from me. This watching… as long as it can persist without any effort, in complete stillness… the cinema can go on, the wheel can continue to move, undisturbed by me stepping into it again… And there, in that very space, in that very presence of time — the movement of time becomes subtle, and then subtler… the presence of space within me ripples wider and wider…

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Something happened.

The tremendous pain of loneliness is no more in me — now there is aloneness; there is a state of acceptance; there is a meeting of past and present moment — a catharsis, you may call it, just happened. This moment is neither numbness nor pleasure, neither dreaming nor dreamless abyss, neither in crisis nor in need of saving… only a subtle presence of energy to move on, to go on… in acceptance — in a sense of a boundless space of peace, in a sense of a fresh new possibility of opening to life and living.

One could say that I accepted the pain, the nostalgia, the depression, the madness of loneliness — and all of that just left me, leaving me all alone, of all there was to experience. But these are just words — there is no way to express that to you. You must watch it for yourself; you must go through this all alone. After all, where you are, in your own space and time — I am just another object in the grand screen of your watching, in your wheel of time…

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Some questions might still remain. The deep existential crisis, the deep overwhelming pain and suffering, might come back again — but this time you will be ready to face it with a fresh breeze of clarity. This time you may wander even more into yourself… You may ask yourself…

Can the cinema, the screen, and the projector ever meet… and be the same? Can the watcher and that which is being watched ever be the same? Can the dream and the dreamer ever be the same?

From this very moment of space and time, in this very existence of time — this tale has no tale.