SPIRITUAL LONELINESS

I have been admiring the paintings at the I Require Art website.  A lot of them appear to me to be the Atman in the artists struggling to awaken.  Much of it, accordingly, looks to be the artists’ frustration, even madness, noticeable in their hard brush strokes, to the extent that I feel quite insane myself afterwards.  Depressed, lonely, I find myself missing the company of God.

“Sweet loneliness” is what I call this state, what the Cloud of Unknowing terms “darkness.”  I have felt it in other circumstances.  Emotional loneliness is what I thought it was when it first occurred, but I have experienced emotional loneliness before, and this is something quite different.

Spiritual loneliness, then, is what it is, the Atman yearning for Brahman, its source, as in the artists.  Unlike the artists, I now welcome the loneliness, nurture and savor it even, hence “sweet” loneliness.  I call it this, knowing that God is just on the other side of it.