Dealing With Loneliness | Eckhart Tolle

Now here we have another question. Another person who is dissatisfied for another reason. I'm on a path of awakening, but my deep loneliness at not having a life partner is an obstacle to my spiritual development. I get deeply depressed, though I do my best to stay present in the now instead of dwelling on my longing. What advice could you offer? Okay, well, I won't say Internet dating. There is a part in every person the form, the form identity of who you are. And the level of form tends either towards the male or the female. It might not necessarily be the physical, the physical male may tend more to the other. So it doesn't necessarily depend on your physical form, but you tend to tend either towards the male or the female. And therefore you're not complete because you're only one half on the level of form, which is the physical form or just underneath that, the psychological or emotional form. And so there is a natural longing for the other. Polarity or completeness in a human being. And you can feel that as a sex is only part of that. But it goes beyond sexual longing. There's more to it than that. There's also an emotional longing for the other. So they go together. And there's that pull that you can feel on the level of form. And when that is not satisfied, then that can lead to unhappiness. Particularly if you have not transcended at all your identification with form. If you are still totally, totally identified with you as this physical form and psychological form, the transcendent dimension has not come into your life at all, then you would become very dissatisfied. And depending also to some extent what culture you live in. There are traditional cultures still on our planet where it's almost you have to find a partner. And if you are not, everybody would look down on you as being a total and miserable failure. In some traditional cultures, if you, if you're not married at a certain, by a certain age or you cannot give birth to children, people look down on you and despise you and you're miserable for the rest of your life. You have not fulfilled your form identity. And so, and also in some traditional cultures the, the sense of self is very strongly bound up with whether you are a man or a woman. So more so than in the west, it still persists to some extent in the west, but much less so than in some traditional cultures where if you are a man, in certain cultures you are, this becomes 70% of who you feel you are. Your self identity is the male, you are the male and you look at every woman that's a Female, you can't relate to a woman as a human being. You are the male and she is the female. And she is, of course, not your equal. And the woman is totally identified with being the female form. And behaves according to that kind of collective conditioning. So, depending on where it is, I won't act it out. But here in the west, it's a little easier to step out of those collective expectations. It is more acceptable in the west to say, my choice is not to get married. And you can even say, my choice is not to have children. And people say, okay, so there's a bit more freedom there. And yet the longing for the other on the form level is still there. Emotional, sexual. The essence is to be able to transcend who you are on the level of form. Whether or not you find a partner that meets that longing. Or whether you go from one partner to another and another, or you find one life partner with whom you are for the rest of your life. That is secondary, really. Because even if you have a partner, if you have not gone deeper and encountered the transcendent dimension to who you are beyond the form identity of you as the male or the female or whatever, the nationality or the particular status in society, whatever makes up your form identity in addition to gender, if you haven't gone beyond that, then even the relationships, yes, you might have found your partner, but you won't be satisfied in the relationship. In the absence of the transcendent dimension, the spiritual dimension, you may come to some kind of compromise, living together, somehow managing to stay together, but you'll be. Actually, you have a longing to get out. So the people who are outside the relationships have a longing to get in or marriage. And those who are in have a longing to get out. So the young girl or man, late teens, early 20s, they want to get into the cage. And those who are in the cage want to get out of the cage. It is quite possible to notice the sense of. In the absence of a partner, it is quite possible to notice a certain sense of lack on the level of form. And yet have a lot of spaciousness around that sense of lack. Yes, I can feel that there is a longing. But the longing does not consume you. The longing has not taken possession of you. And making you into an unhappy person. A totally unfulfilled and bitter person, perhaps. No, the longing is there, but the longing that arises from your particular form of you exists within, is a spaciousness. Because that is the transcendent dimension. And who you are is not the unfulfilled longing. Who you Are is the presence or the stillness around it, that is the shift. So the longing may persist, but you can live with it. However, if you are no longer trapped in the longing, it's also quite possible that a change will come into your life, particularly if the intense neediness goes I need somebody. And then everybody you meet can feel the neediness when you've given somebody a phone number you've just met and then you're waiting for them to call. And they are less likely to call when the neediness is there. They are more likely to call when a certain spaciousness is there. I'd love you to call. I'd love this person to call me, but he may or she may or may not, and there's again a spaciousness around it. So of course you can take action towards meeting somebody. I don't know whether the questioner has taken any action and actually gone to places perhaps where one meets people, not necessarily nightclubs. We might not meet the most conscious people in bars, but there are other places one can go to where you meet people. And even the Internet, why not? This is the way. Many people read that way. But even there, if you haven't gone beyond the absolute neediness of needing somebody, then it's less likely to work out for you. But if you have that sense of some inner spaciousness around the longing, then the way in which you approach others changes without that absolute pull. So that's my suggestion then, is see if you can, on the outer level, see how and where you could meet people and explore. Perhaps you will find somebody here or there to realize that the transcendence is the most vital thing, does not exclude the possibility of taking action on an outer level. Of course, that is always secondary. But why not? And maybe you find a good website where you meet conscious. Is there such a thing, conscious dating? If there isn't, maybe it's a business idea, conscious dating. Of course, the difficulty is a person who thinks of themselves as conscious may be deluded. So find that place where the polarities actually are not there anymore in the being, the I am ness that's deeper than the form, and go there as much as you can. It may not totally free you of the longing, but that's okay. The longing will just become a thing that's no longer overwhelming. And then take action and see what happens. This mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive. To be free, you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation. It.