August 28

”Meditation means going into your loneliness wholeheartedly, to discover it, to investigate into it, to inquire into it.” OSHO

Being alone used to frighten me. Knowing what I know about myself now, I am not really that surprised. I don’t think I could have faced being alone and the possibility of getting to know myself, as sick as I was, and been able to be ok with all that. I really didn’t like who I was and I was certainly too afraid to stop and look at myself. It’s taken time to get comfortable being on my own. It is still not the easiest thing to do, I often find myself pulled to any number of distractions to take me away from those moments of internal reflection. But I am starting to have those dialogues with myself, to delve into who I am and explore the loneliness. This too is a part of my recovery and one I know I need to overcome to remain healthy. It is strange to feel like there are parts of myself I have to avoid, or that are difficult to know how to handle. Yet I need to remember that I have applied one solution to all my problems, at least the emotional stressful ones, for so many years, that I haven’t needed to learn other ways of dealing with life. I spent too many years not allowing myself to be lonely, creating a belief that it was a bad thing. Loneliness, sadness, and even grief are not bad things in of themselves. It’s how I used them to isolate, to justify my choices, or other negative actions that was the problem. Today I can handle them differently as I learn new tools in recovery.

Affirmation If I remove the “L” from loneliness, it makes oneliness, which for me is a study of myself. I will take time to get to know myself better today.