I am constantly reflecting on the principles that are a foundation of the spiritual journey that I am on. This one is, perhaps, the strangest one. It has to do with feeling alone in the world. No one signs up for that. No one that I know enjoys feeling alone in the world of things. Whether it’s at work, or in our neighborhood, or among family–biological or chosen–feeling alone very often makes us want to contract, to draw in on ourselves.  Feeling alone can make us want to quit, to give up. While there are times when taking a break from things can be healing and restorative, life by its very nature is a series of progressions, even when they are circular. There is movement in life and living, and feeling alone doesn’t feel like that. 

Here’s why I think feeling alone can be foundational to our spiritual journeys. Feeling alone gets our attention. We notice it. (As you have seen in some of my other blogs, noticing is an important principle in the spiritual journey, too). When feeling alone gets our attention, it has been my experience that the feeling exists in us as a doorway into something else. Feeling alone in the world is a doorway into some insight or experience or view of life that we did not consciously have “on board” as our operating system. 

I remember once feeling that kind of aloneness as a teacher. One day, that feeling came to the foreground (I noticed it) when I heard a teacher in the room next to me laughing.  Laughing a lot. And she was laughing with her students. That made me feel even more alone. A few days later, after feeling alone got my attention, it occurred to me: why don’t I laugh more? Am I being too serious? Are there ways to lighten up and laugh more in my daily work as a teacher? The short answer to all of those questions was a resounding “yes.” And, looking back, I know that that simple internal awareness of feeling alone really changed the course of my life as a teacher. Laughter has become an important vehicle of relating and connecting in my classrooms. It has made my life better and, I am convinced, my students’ lives better. It started by noticing how alone I felt. 

No one likes feeling alone, but when it comes along–as it will–we might be surprised what is waiting for us right behind that doorway, to help us along the way. 

~Robert Patrick

If these kinds of questions and experiences sound familiar, spiritual direction can be a good way to explore them.  Here’s how to get started.