Loneliness is an aching void in the center of our beings,
a deep longing to love and be loved,
to be fully known and accepted by at least one other person.
It is a hollow, haunting sound sweeping thru our depths,
chilling our bones and causing us to shiver.

    Is there a person, anywhere,
who has never felt the stab of loneliness,
who has never experienced the eerie distance
of isolation and separation,
who has never suffered the pain of rejection or the loss of love?

    The final rupture or breakdown of a valued loving relationship,
the sudden death of someone who was close and special,
an unavoidable separation from a loved one
—these things strike loneliness into our hearts,
the intense experience of the absence of that specific person.

    But sometimes loneliness has no name attached.
This is the general feeling of being alone,
isolated, separated from others.

    And there is a third kind of loneliness—existential loneliness—
which is even deeper and more pervasive than either of the first two.
It often disguises itself as longing for a specific person
or pretends to be yearning for contact with anyone,
but this deeper lack or emptiness-of-being
is not really a kind of loneliness at all.
Being together with other people, even people we intensely love,
does not overcome this deep incompleteness of being.
This inner default of selfhood has never been solved by relationships,
no matter how good and close and warm our relationships might be.

OUTLINE:

I. Five Differences between
        Interpersonal Loneliness and Existential Loneliness

II. How Does it Feel to be Existentially Lonely?

III. Beyond Existential Loneliness

    Whatever the state of our relationships
—whether close and warm, boring and cool, or non-existent—
we should distinguish our experience of interpersonal loneliness
from the much deeper, more central, spiritual loneliness.

    Spiritual loneliness is really a void within ourselves,
a hollowness that cannot be filled with other people
—no matter how close, warm, and fulfilling our relationships might be.
The yearning we feel is real; it comes from the depths of our selves.
But love is not the answer to this spiritual yearning.
Fusing with another person will not solve all our problems.
But if our real problem is our Spiritual Malaise—felt as loneliness—
even the most ideal loving relationship will not fill the aching void.

    For a time, probably, love will cover our inner emptiness,
but after the initial period of emotional excitement is over,
our fundamental hollowness will make itself felt again.
Then we may blame each other for our spiritual alienation.
We may respond to the reappearance of loneliness
by changing partners.
With a new person to love, we can become lost in romance again,
forgetting momentarily our inner incompleteness of being.

    The belief that 'true love' will solve our Spiritual Dilemma
is one of the strongest illusions of the Western world.
Perhaps only a series of disappointments will convince us
that love cannot solve our spiritual loneliness.

I. Five Differences between
        Interpersonal Loneliness and Existential Loneliness

   1. Both the longing for a specific person and the general urge
to make connections with others are clearly interpersonal feelings.
But spiritual loneliness only seems to be yearning for love.
Even the best love will not abolish our spiritual loneliness.
After a while, the inner lack or hollowness gnaws thru again.

    2. Interpersonal loneliness results from being isolated and alone.
When we reunite with the people we love, our loneliness disappears.
But when being together with the people we love
does not overcome our 'loneliness', it may be spiritual loneliness.
We may feel 'lonely', incomplete, and unfulfilled
even when we are receiving all the loving we could ask for.
Nothing others can do will abolish this 'loneliness'
because the problem is spiritual rather than interpersonal.

    3. Interpersonal loneliness is usually temporary;
when our relationships improve, this loneliness disappears.
But spiritual loneliness is a permanent condition of our beings.
Independent of the ups and downs of our love-lives,
our spiritual loneliness remains—a persistent lack of wholeness.

    4. Interpersonal loneliness affects only one part of our lives.
But spiritual loneliness affects every dimension of existence.
We feel incomplete, inadequate, miserable in everything.

    5. We know how to cure interpersonal loneliness: Find people.
It is seldom easy to create good personal relationships,
but at least we know some appropriate ways
to open ourselves to others.
But rearranging our relationships
will not cure our spiritual loneliness.
In fact, we may be disappointed to feel essentially 'lonely'
even when our relationships are doing very well.
Our central hollowness remains unfulfilled
no matter what the state of our personal relationships.

II. How Does it Feel to be Existentially Lonely?

    Spiritual loneliness is discovered in our depths.
Sometimes, when we least expect it, loneliness freezes us.
Or perhaps it feels like the bottom dropping out of our being.
We feel incomplete, as if something important is missing.
We feel shaky and insecure inside, weak and 'clingy'.
Sometimes this gnawing deficiency makes us want to 'devour' others
—to get as much of them as possible,
to complete our egos by possessing them.
Or we may seek to be supported and protected by others.

III. Beyond Existential Loneliness

    However, our spiritual loneliness can be cured
—independent of our personal relationships.
If our interior hollowness is filled, we no longer use other persons
to plug up our inner holes and fill in our deficiencies of being.
Instead of trying to fit other people into our interior gap,
we find ourselves loving
from a deep richness, fullness, and completeness.
We are empowered to give to others
without expecting anything in return.

    Altho each person's journey toward this liberation is individual,
we may, nevertheless, distinguish three movements within our spirits:
1. We separate interpersonal loneliness from spiritual loneliness.
2. We abandon our former attempts to solve our Malaise by love.
3. We leap across the Abyss
and find ourselves freed from spiritual loneliness.

    If our problem is really spiritual rather than interpersonal,
we need a spiritual solution
—rather than a psychological method of healing.
The same inner sensitivity and subjectivity
that enabled us to grapple with our existential loneliness
can now help us to grope our individual ways to Existential Freedom.

    Just how we enter the new condition of spiritual wholeness
may always remain a mystery.
Each of us can only try to become sensitive to those interior moments
when we spontaneously find ourselves whole and filled.
If we learn how to attune ourselves better to such moments of peace,
we may discover how to be so that such moments will return.

    Existential Freedom comes over us in a surprising way,
which tells us that this new way of being
is not a latent personality characteristic now blooming.
So when we find ourselves living beyond existential loneliness,
we are not tempted to be proud, as if it were a personal achievement.
Our new completeness is not the result of strenuous internal efforts.
The transformation comes precisely when we give up striving.
And that may be all we will ever know about the process:
how we orient ourselves internally to enable completeness to come.

    When we discover how to open ourselves to this gift,
our hollow yearning is filled, our spiritual loneliness is cured.
In that very place in our depths where we used to feel
empty, lacking, deficient, incomplete, lonely, and needy,
we now find ourselves satisfied and full.

    This new fulfillment empowers us to love in a new way.
Instead of trying to use others to fill our aching spiritual Void,
we can now appreciate them for the persons they really are.
We no longer need to cling to others
because their absence does not throw us back into spiritual loneliness.

    If we discover how to live beyond existential loneliness,
we are empowered to love from fullness rather than emptiness.

Interpersonal Loneliness            Spiritual Loneliness

1. Human isolation, separation,    1. Incompleteness of being,
lack of relationship.                     lack of wholeness.

2. Results from being alone;        2. Primordial incompleteness of self;
social cause.                               inward source.

3. Comes and goes with the         3. Permanent lack of completeness,
rise and fall of relationships.        even within love.

4. Limited to the interpersonal     4. Taints every aspect of life;
dimension of life.                        cannot be isolated.

5. Solved by communication,       5. Cannot be overcome by love;
sharing, closeness, love.             incompleteness, unfulfillment continues.

1. Have you ever felt lonely for one specific person?

2. Have you also felt the general desire to have more human contact?

3. Have you believed that love is the answer to your Spiritual Malaise?

4. To what extent have you tried to solve your spiritual loneliness
    by trying to create better loving relationships?

5. If you are not yet convinced,
    what additional experiences are likely to convince you
    that love cannot cure spiritual loneliness?

6. In what ways does our culture say that love is the answer?

7. How realistic are the images of love in movies, music, etc.?

8. Have you ever experienced spiritual loneliness
    even in the midst of a wonderful loving relationship?

9. What part of your 'urge to merge' with another person
    is really your underlying spiritual loneliness?

10. Is continued spiritual loneliness sometimes a cause of divorce?

11. Where are you in your spiritual journey
    from loneliness to Existential Freedom?

12. Has Existential Freedom enabled you to love without clinging?

James Park Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death
(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 1995)
If you click the title above, the complete table of contents will appear.
This shows that there are 11 major ways to understand our Malaise:
existential loneliness, depression, absurdity, meaninglessness,
the existential void, anxiety (angst), existential splitting, guilt,
death, despair, and finally existential insecurity.
The following is the most relevant chapter:
Chapter 1, "Existential Loneliness" p. 25-38.

James Park New Ways of Loving (Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2000)
Chapter 13 "Love Among Existentially Free People" p. 224-231.

James Park Opening to Grace:
Transcending Our Spiritual Malaise
(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 1999).
Chapter 1 of this book is available on-line:
Interpersonal Loneliness & Spiritual Loneliness.

For several other background books,
click: Books on Existential Spirituality.

For a brief description of existential spirituality
in the form of answers to 10 questions
that every spirituality should answer,
click: Existential Spirituality Described.

For a one-page outline of a presentation of this same subject,
click the following title:
Loneliness of Spirit: Deeper than the Reach of Love.

AUTHOR:

    James Park is an existential philosopher who has been active
in UU campus ministry in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1986.
He is the webmaster of Heart, Mind, & Spirit.
This 10KB essay is adapted from Chapter 1
of one of his most recent books:
Opening to Grace: Transcending Our Spiritual Malaise.
All rights reserved.
Much more information about James Park
will be found on his home page:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum.

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