Alone And Unloved

I wonder if it's possible to feel un-alone and loved without undergoing a change of consciousness? I remember a period in my life — after boarding school and military service — when, for the first time, I was turned loose to my own devices, i.e., I was "free" to come and go as I pleased.




No longer was my daily schedule regulated from above by parents, teachers, or sergeants. No longer was my room, board, travel, and entertainment paid for.

Disaffected Youth - JJ Semple, 1960s something

If I didn't have a job, I wouldn't eat. If I didn't get out of bed and go to work, they'd evict me. If I didn't go out in search of friendship and sex, I would remain friendless and unrelieved. Of course, there was always the people at work, but at my first two jobs in photography labs, I spent six hours a day in a darkroom. Lots of time for fantasizing and daydreaming about why I was miserable and what I might do to turn my life around, but not much for pursuing relationships or expanding my social life.

It's that way for many. Witness the following:

"I'm very good at being chatty, I can talk to anyone, but that doesn't mean I'm able to have those lasting relationships with people," says Michelle. "You can be in a group and it can be intimidating because you're conscious of not letting people get to know the 'real you'.

"I would say I've always had an element of feeling lonely. Ever since I was a teenager, I've always felt a little bit different and separate from large groups of friends, but in the last five years it's crept in more."

Michelle has experienced anxiety and depression which she finds can amplify her loneliness because she finds it hard to articulate negative emotions.

"If I'm in a group I often find myself saying 'I'm great' when people ask how I am. It's almost like an out-of-body experience because I can hear myself saying these positive things, when I'm thinking about how I struggled to get out bed yesterday. It's the loneliness of knowing how you feel in your own head and never being able to tell people."

 ~ "Surrounded by people - but I feel so unloved" - The Loneliness Experiment - BBC

 So I enrolled in George Washington University. And instead of nothing and no one, there was suddenly too much. I became even more frantic. If I wasn't seeing someone or going somewhere, I felt alone and unloved. 

Close to the university at 25th. Street and Pennsylvania Ave. across the street from St. Stephen-Martyr Church, I had a great one-bedroom apartment for $90/mo. (now, 50 years later, it's the Avenue Suites, Georgetown). Another classic Washington row house bites the dust.



Parties and a series of girl friends; minimalist, yet tasteful, furniture, the apartment was equidistant from my two favorite Pennsylvania Avenue bars: Brownley's to the right and the One Step Down to the left, hot spots I'd repair to for a round, or several rounds of drinks, if I wasn't seeing someone. At last call, I'd lurch my way home from Brownley's in the snow through a messy construction site (the Washington Circle underpass was being built at the time).

I was feuding with St. Stephen's. Their noisy bells waking me at early hours...so I'd put a large speaker on my window that blared Thelonious Monk at the ringing bells. At one party I suddenly had the thought that all the guests were having more fun than I was, so I ordered everyone out. That was my life: too much to drink or smoke and a feeling that I was missing something, that somewhere people I knew were having more fun than I was.

And so it came to pass...getting tossed out on the street. I was having a bacon, egg, and English muffin brunchfast one morning when the door started being knocked on. I opened it and three burly men with moving equipment brushed by me and started packing everything up. I and my household and my tasty breakfast were out on the street in less than ten minutes.

It's not that I couldn't have raised the $90.00, I just didn't want to be bothered. By the time I came back with a borrowed truck, most my possessions had disappeared.

The story made the bar circuit with me for a week, until I grew sick of it and sick of my life.

Within five years, I had moved to Paris — practicing yoga and meditating. When kundalini awakened two years later, I immediately felt unbounded. It had always been me and everyone else, and why couldn't I be as happy everyone else seemed to be?

No anxiety; it had faded away. No why-was-I-so mixed up; I no longer was.

I didn't have to work at getting adjusted like so many of my contemporaries who'd spent fortunes on psychs. Kundalini had effected an organic change — the physical actions of yoga and meditation had opened up the metaphysical. My consciousness had changed, and along with it, my Being. Washing the dishes became the same as going to a party.

Sure there was a long adjustment: learning to live with kundalini is a long process, affecting the somatic, metabolic as well as the emotional and the cognitive. I was no longer spiraling downward.

GROSS: You know, early in your career, you said that your work is really about the sadness normal people feel because they're not involved in show business.
(LAUGHTER)
WATERS: Somebody said that was the snottiest thing I've ever said. I didn't mean it to be snotty. But I believe that - that most everybody secretly imagines himself in show business. And every day on their way to work, they're a little bit depressed because they're not. People are sad they're not famous in America.

~ Terry Gross Interview with John Waters - "Cult Icon John Waters On Breaking Taboos And Embracing Villains" - Fresh Air, NPR

The Biology of Consciousness

New Age consciousness is a mass movement. Yet consciousness is related to human biology, a fact most people are unaware of. They see the treetops, but not the roots. Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time is a case study on how Kundalini overhauls one's biology to create a new human being in one lifetime. That is the power of Kundalini.

The question put forward, extrapolated from my experience, is: With the adoption of systems from other cultures, such as meditation and Yoga as well as the veritable explosion of New Age self-realization systems could the mass experimentation with these techniques ultimately trigger an acceleration of human evolution or will we have to wait for evolution to simply take its course? Is there sufficient critical mass to allow the various self-realization techniques to push humanity over the threshold of higher consciousness or do these techniques only produce temporary change in a given individual? If we could influence evolution by the mass practice of these techniques, which ones work best?

Yes, there are many paths, many systems, many techniques. They work in different ways. Some work by improving the individual's outlook and world view. Some actually overhaul the entire being. But how many of them alter brain chemistry in any significant fashion? Because that is where higher consciousness is forged. In my case, an activated Kundalini altered my somatic, metabolic, and genetic actuality, rearranging me physically.

While practicing a given system, one often becomes a devoted disciple, forgetting to evaluate the results with a critical eye. Does the system I practice actually produce results? Am I changing? How? Is my brain chemistry changing? For instance, am I able to function at a higher level? Do I have a greater existential awareness? Could I possibly give up sex and use my distilled sexual energy for the sublimation purposes? How can I prove I am changing? Can I demonstrate altered brain chemistry? Or have I only convinced myself that I must be changing because I'm an eager follower of such-and-such a system?

Our Multi-cultural World: Store Window Saris in Berkeley, CA

Is there a scientific way of confirming altered brain chemistry? A way of showing that Method A alters brain chemistry more completely than Method B?

Right now, scientists combating Alzheimer's offer solutions for increasing, or stabilizing, brain cell propagation. Cognitive techniques of all sorts, from tic-tac-toe to Monopoly to crossword puzzles to attention, memory, and coordination games. There are websites devoted to these types of exercises. Websites that after a few free rounds ask you to pay. Here's how one site, Lumosity, describes their neuron rebuilding program:

"The Human Cognition Project makes it easy for neuroscience researchers to study the questions that advance their research in ways that have not been previously possible. The ease of use and engaging nature of the Lumosity programs means that people enjoy doing the training, making it easy to recruit and retain participants in university-based studies. It also means that the database of users worldwide is growing everyday, giving researchers a new venue for exploring cognition not previously available. With over 14 million members worldwide having played hundreds of millions of game, Lumosity has the largest database of human cognition ever assembled. Researchers are actively exploring this database to understand the determinants of cognitive performance and cognitive enhancement — all in an effort to make the world a smarter place."

For all the buildup it's not really scientifically certain that cognitive exercises prevent the onslaught of dementia. So what about New Age consciousness enhancing methods? What about traditional methods, like Yoga and meditation? What is their track record?

I'm not sure there is one, except for scattered, unfiltered anecdotal reports — books like Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, for instance. Unfortunately, scientists don't approve of anecdotal data. Even the thousands of statements related to Near Death Experience make them uncomfortable, despite the fact that similar statements are collected from people who don't know each other, live in different places, belong to different religions, and don't share a common culture. Doesn't the notion of critical mass begin to apply here?

Visit the Self-Realization Restaurant

It's the same for Kundalini, for Tai Chi, for meditation methods of all sorts, for all New Age proclivities and predispositions. It's up to each of us to find a means of quantifying the neural regenerative aspects of a given system and then comparing the results with, say, cognitive game therapy such as Lumosity. In the future we will have to work together, but with so many different types of awakening experiences we can start by exploring with the brain chemistry altering capabilities of a science like Kundalini meditation, which actually floods the brain with dementia fighting substances, derived and distilled from sex energy.

My Daily Dose Workout

Everyone does some form of exercise; even advanced couch potato-ism, or the utter lack of exercise, is a statement on the issue. Okay, maybe it's only to take a stand against it. Maybe it's laziness. Whatever. It is what it is. All I can do is present my meager workout and the reasons behind each component.

By most workout standards, mine isn't very impressive.

I spread it out over the day. Starting with 10-20 squats when I get up, I add various pieces during the day in no particular order:

• Squats
• Hatha Yoga
• 2-3 mile walk
• Nordic Track
• Slant board
• The Nauli
• Earthing

I'm not out to set records or build washboard abs; I'm merely seeking to create a rounded approach to preserving the health of my body. After all, most of my exercise is accomplished during meditation: action through non-action. When the Kundalini is at its most invigorating. Seizing control of my being, taking inventory, sending energy throughout my Being.

I've been doing the same Yoga routine for many years now; it's the centerpiece of my workout. As for walking, I'm blessed to have a choice of terrains, from moody seascapes...

Pacific coast off Trinidad

...to sparkling bird sanctuaries in the low country marshlands.

Arcata Marsh

The walk over, I'm back at writing and editing. Somewhere along the way, I'll come back to the present and spend 5-10 minutes on the Nordic Track. Not one of the new fancy ones, the Classic Cross Country Skier:

This device is the closet thing to real cross-country skiing. Yes, it's expensive, but I've had it for 21 years, enough time to amortize the cost. No. it's probably not in vogue. So what? It serves. And once you start gliding, you can close your eyes and imagine the French Jura mountains.

I finish the day on my slant board. It's not the most well-known device, and active, it isn't. But although it is passive, I can feel a lot going on inside me as I lie there.

Ten to fifteen minutes and all my organs are back in the right places. Blood is circulating in new, refreshing ways, and for a moment gravity has been held to a standstill.

The manufacturer tells us, "Slant boards have been popular in the natural health and beauty fields for many years. The BodySlant works on the same principal as a slant board. And, as recommended by slant board advocates, the height of the BodySlant (both models) in the slant position is 14 inches. Laying on the BodySlant is a passive position. It's a lazy way to perk up you youth and vitality. Still, if inverting your body is a topsy-turvy concept to you, you may wish to seek the advise of a wellness expert before you begin. But, you can't escape Gravity's pitfalls on this planet. And the BodySlant, in this light, is certainly user friendly for everyone."

That's my workout: desultory, almost without purpose.

Recently, I've added Earthing, which, from the way it works, would seem to be completely passive. Yet it's quite active in that it's constantly infusing my body with the Earth's energy.

 

According to Earthing literature:

"Earthing is a fast-growing movement based upon the major discovery that connecting to the Earth's natural energy is foundational for vibrant health."

In keeping with my sensitivity to all energy sources, both positive and negative, I definitely feel a tingling sensation as the Earth's energy flows into my body. Earthing products bring the healthy equivalent of walking barefoot indoors to your high rise condo or your second floor bedroom. Check out the science behind it.

The main thing is: You must remain health-consciously vigilant. Take charge of your health care. Manage it yourself — to the best of your ability. Here's a good reason why Number One (your Being) needs to look after your own body and your health:
 
Insurers seek to cash in on unhealthy lifestyles

"British pension providers are asking insurers to identify people likely to die young in a bid to reduce the amount of retirement income they have to pay out.



"Pension trustees ask people to provide private medical information. The data is then given to an insurer which may take on the brunt of the liabilities of the pension scheme if it believes members will die shortly after retirement."



My Take

We need the will, both individual and collective, for better health. A desire that influences, and ultimately diminishes, the numbers of preexisting conditions. After all, what are preexisting conditions but exposure to the various adverse, de-generative conditions of modern life.



Surely they are not the by-product of the Cosmic numbers game, where conditions are handed out before birth? A this-time-around-it's-your-turn kind of thing? The universe determining who gets the short end of the stick. Individual and collective will can shape our health — Get us to a point where fewer people have these conditions. Is it easy? No. But it is possible.