COULD IT BE?

Our priority is our inside world where God is; we have this yearning to always be with God.  As a result we may isolate ourselves, becoming monks for all intents and  purposes.  As monks, though, we face the same dilemma as all other monks.  For our mental health, we must engage the outside world to some degree, even if it is only taking a walk among other people.

Taking a stroll among others, however, engages our egoic self.  Our egoic self is the outside world.  Suddenly we feel depressed.  Depression comes of frustration, which in this instance stems from our not being with God.  One solution to this is to see God in other people, hence in Vedanta for instance, the notion that the one Atman is in everyone.  Everyone is actually us.

Yet it doesn't feel this way to many of us.  Our experience of God is entirely interior, personal, intimate, the absence of which even briefly has us running back to the sanctity of our rooms.  Could it be that this is what other people are for?  We need others for our mental health, even as they drive us back to our spiritual health.