Maybe a new thread would be a good idea. My spiritual director has said what some of the messages said that I need to believe and love myself. I was at the Benedictine Monastery today and felt calm but as I left I felt lonliness and my focus shift to me. I called my sponsor and talked with family. At the oblate we spent alot of time talking about Origion" I am killing the spelling" the church father in that discussion we talked about the will and the fundamental option. What I received from the discussion was I do have a choice and every choice I make will make it more difficult or easier to choose Christ at the end of my life. At times I paint myself still as a victim while still holding on to my addictions and idols.

A new thread for a new start. Great idea, Jaan.

And that sounds like great advice about believing in and loving ourselves.

I hope you are well. And all my prayers, love and best wishes are with you.

I finally made it to a meeting. My program has been centered on my work, parish life, and friends. I am thinking about what the new thread will be about maybe the issue of divorce and annullment. My life is calming down but the lonliness remains. God has been good.

My life is calming down but the lonliness remains. God has been good.

I wish I knew the cure for loneliness. I'd bottle it and make a fortune. I hope you start your thread soon and begin to talk this stuff out, Jaan. Meanwhile, here's a tonic for your loneliness.

This world is made by love, for love. That's it. That's the whole truth.

Everything you need for love will be put into your path. It is our pre-conceived ideas and our own blind and arrogant willfulness to do things our way, dammit, that is at the heart of the problem. Reality works if we trust it. It sucks big-time if we don't. And it's worse than that. Without a deep and total trust in reality, every moment can be like Chinese water torture because every moment that goes by that doesn't seem to go toward solving our problem is just another moment adding to the problem. Stress builds. Hopelessness builds. Loneliness builds.

I'm pretty much alone right now in my actually physical life and have been for some time. And I can't say that I really understand it, although I've thought a lot about it. I don't have B.O. I'm a nice guy. I can put more than two words together in front of another person. But this is my path right now and I can either choose to trust it or reject it. The price for rejecting it is enormous. The price for accepting it is trust. And the benefits are immediate and they quite literally last for eternity. Trust your path, Jaan.

I know at least a couple people in real life who are very angry people. And I think they remain that way because they expect the world to change. They do not expect or think that they are the ones that need to change. After all, they are the ones who have been wronged in their lives. (And they indeed have been.) So it is only natural to think that one can stay where one is, that there is natural righteousness and deservingness there, that it is the world that must confess its sins, so to speak, and move to enfold and accept us. And I think we catch by this behavior and belief the intution many people have that their lives will be ordered for them and that they don't have to struggle so much. And indeed, I do believe that is true, although I�m only slowly coming to grips with this and do not anywhere near understand the full implications of what is called Divine Providence. But the part of the equation that many haven't fully comprehended is that if one expects oneself to be taken care of by reality, then one must trust the Caretaker. And people surely do to a certan extent. But when we get stuck, when we stay in our anger or even our loneliness, I believe it is because we have a plan for ourselves and we're not very flexible about it. This inflexibility leads us to miss the lessons that are put before us. This infelxibility leads us to miss walking through some of those open doors that are presented. And this inflexibility, most of all, leads us to stay in ourselves as we are when what we need to do is open up and out to the world.

Indeed, particularly concerning anger (and I've experienced this myself for years), those who are angry may not realize that they have little desire to let go of that anger. Until I desired to, I could not. And I have recently desired to, and I have. And it occurred to me this morning whether the same dynamic could apply to my loneliness. And I think that it surely does. I am alone because I want to be alone right now and it does little good for me to complain about it. What I need to to is figure out why I might want to be alone and to trust that it's okay right now to be alone. As Pauline and others have taught me, it pays to pay close attention to our intentions�our true intentions, not the little stories and fairytales we fool ourselves with inside our heads. I've got a million of them. One of those stories that helps to justify my loneliness is that I am growing fast by having this "hermit time" by myself and that it will allow me to help other people. Indeed, part of that is true. But probably a much bigger part is that I'm just afraid of opening up and being battered once again by the world. They say the truth sets us free. This is one of those truism to hold onto and remember.

And so I'm going to challenge you brother Jaan to drop some of your own internal stories that you tell yourself and come to truth. Truth will be easy, light and cleansing. It always is. It's all that effort we put forward to stay away from it that is so hard, heavy, and obscuring. What is the truth of your life? What are you holding onto stubbornly so that you won't have to undergo the stretching and shaping of transformation? Is your loneliness no more than the desire to cling to the safety and protection of not digging deeper into yourself and letting yourself truly be known to others? That would be my guess because, particularly on this forum, I find you to be sincere, honest, warm, gentle�.but not particularly communicative. You give us broad outlines of problems, but very few details. And that's okay for here. We're all relative strangers. A person should probably keep one's problems close to his or her vest, at least concerning strangers. But I have a feeling that this simply mirrors what you do in real life, Jaan. And I wouldn't even dare challenge you like this if I didn't have my own severe and dehabilitating issues in this regard. And it�s a very common problem. But relationship IS the meaning of life. That's why we're all here. And the pinicale of relationship is to relate lovingly. And the method and means of being able to do so is by being authentic. I think it's no more or less than that.

And when one is lonely, when one has become isolated (for whatever reason), this is when we need a close and real relationship with God. We need this relationship to be real, not pretend or even just based on hope. We need to let go and trust so that this connection is made. And this is truly how all things work for the good. Our isolation from other people (if only for the moment) becomes a real and precise opportunity to deepen a relationship with Reality itself. And we dare not treat this relationship as a crutch, a comforting fantasy, or a projection of our internal need. This is one relationship that can be inherently private and intimate�but only if we truly let go into it. And that is what we must do even in the best of times, let alone those more trying times. God is, at the very least, our training wheels on the path to intimacy and authenticity. That is why I, for one, have no problem whatsoever swearing at him. I have no problem letting he/she/it know my anger, disappointment and needs. If God can see inside to my very soul then there is little point in trying to hide anything and to put on only my good face.

Yes, it would do our hearts good, perhaps the most good, to spend as much time as we can feeling thankful. But what if we�re not feeling particularly thankful? Should we just fake it then? I certainly don�t think so. Let thankfulness, when it comes (and it will come), be authentic. Let everything be authentic. That is the point. So our loneliness truly is at least partially a function of our stubbornness and just plain unwillingness to authentically communicate, for there is One to whom we can communicate completely authentically and do so completely privately and securely. And one of the ways god communicates with us is through other people. That�s the truth. I truly think we need to actually see the face of god in other people. And then � whamo � it just might occur to us to make that connection. When we make God very, very real in our lives we begin to see him/her/it acting and in those around us. People are no longer enemies and obstacles. They are a piece of the divine and are due at least a piece of the love and reverence we hold for god.

But old habits die hard. Old ways of looking at ourselves and the world most definitely die hard. But let them die. They are useless now and unneeded. Authenticity. Relationship. Love. I think those three things can guide us in all things. And if we�re feeling authentically afraid, then we must honor that. But to do so we must be honest that this is so and not make excuses.

wow brad this drives home the messages I have been hearing this week. My selfishness, so called needs are fueling my fantasies which are fueling my inability to be authentic keeping from developing my relationship with God and others. My sponsor would say except the fact I cannot do this and admit my need for God and allow him to do what I cannot do for myself. Thanks brad for reminding me of this