How To Be Alone With Yourself?

[Guest Annetta]

Hi, I want to do an "internet fast" for 1-2 weeks, and the reason that I have a hard time with this is because it is difficult to be alone with myself.  What are some things I can do for this?

[Toby]

Osho-quote on "Aloneness" and "Loneliness" from @Prabhaker incoming.

[Martin123]

@Annetta I wouldnt go that far. At first this could drive you nuts and fire-off a purge that could be life threatening. Treat yourself lightly.
However if it truly resonates, as always, fucking don't listen to this dumbass on an internet forum and go for it.

What I would recommend is truly spending time alone. Perhaps some time without any electronics at all, meditaiotn, getting touc with your emotions and observing your thoughts. Once you get really uncomfortable, you can go watch a movie or smth. Or even talk to someone, message someone.

But approach every interaction with the following mindset
Both of the interactors, are absolutely complete.
They can't give you ANYTHING WHAT SO EVER. And the same applies to you. You can't give them anything at all.
Disclaimer:
Your friendships and relationships just might start falling apart. For the good of it, and only temporarily.

[egoeimai]

It can get kind of boring,and I know I have the same difficulty. But try it...for one day..just spend the time alone. If you can get out,or open the window. Just be as close as you can to nature's physical environment. It can help you..it helps me. Nature will be your friend. Air,birds and the sunset. Put some light music If you cant handle so much peacefulness. But you can draw something. But dont read book as it can be distracting...and If you want to sit alone with your emotions,books cant help. You can do this! You can! Do it for a day. You will be at peace and relaxed. You will like it then! And you will look forward to do it again,next time! I must do the same.

[Prabhaker]

@Annetta @Toby

    We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Aloneness is our very nature, but we are not aware of it. Because we are not aware of it, we remain strangers to ourselves, and instead of seeing our aloneness as a tremendous beauty and bliss, silence and peace, at-easeness with existence, we misunderstand it as loneliness. Loneliness is a misunderstood aloneness. Once you misunderstand your aloneness as loneliness, the whole context changes. 

    Aloneness has a beauty and grandeur, a positivity; loneliness is poor, negative, dark, dismal. Everybody is running away from loneliness. It is like a wound; it hurts. To escape from it, the only way is to be in a crowd, to become part of a society, to have friends, to create a family, to have husbands and wives, to have children. In this crowd, the basic effort is that you will be able to forget your loneliness. But nobody has ever succeeded in forgetting it. That which is natural to you, you can try to ignore -- but you cannot forget it; it will assert again and again.

     And the problem becomes more complex because you have never seen it as it is; you have taken it for granted that you are born lonely. The dictionary meaning is the same; that shows the mind of the people who create dictionaries. They don't understand at all the vast difference between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness is a gap. Something is missing, something is needed to fill it, and nothing can ever fill it because it is a misunderstanding in the first place. As you grow older, the gap also grows bigger. 

    People are so afraid to be by themselves that they do any kind of stupid thing. I have seen people playing cards alone; the other party is not there. They have invented games in which the same person plays cards from both sides. Somehow one wants to remain engaged. That engagement may be with people, may be with work.... There are workaholics; they are afraid when the weekend comes close -- what are they going to do? And if they don't do anything, they are left to themselves, and that is the most painful experience.

   People are playing cards, chess; people are watching television for hours. People are listening to the radio... just to avoid themselves. For all these activities, the only reason is -- not to be left alone; it is very fearful. And this idea is taken from others. 

    Those who have known aloneness say something absolutely different. They say there is nothing more beautiful, more peaceful, more joyful than being alone. But you listen to the crowd. Millions of people agree that to be left to oneself is the worst experience in life; it is hell.

    First basic thing is to know your aloneness absolutely. This escape from yourself you have learned from the crowd. Because everybody is escaping, you start escaping. Every child is born in a crowd and starts imitating people; what others are doing, he starts doing. He falls into the same miserable situations as others are in, and he starts thinking that this is what life is all about. And he has missed life completely.

[Prabhaker]

43 minutes ago, Annetta said:

it is difficult to be alone with myself

It is always difficult in the beginning , once you gather courage to encounter yourself, your painful memories, restless will not haunt you indefinitely. After every dark night there is a bright day. 

When I lived alone I listened http://osho.radio.net/  in the beginning for support, now I enjoy aloneness !

[Martin123]

53 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

When I lived alone I listened http://osho.radio.net/  in the beginning for support, now I enjoy aloneness !

Oh that's why....
damn

[Dodo]

1 hour ago, Annetta said:

Hi, I want to do an "internet fast" for 1-2 weeks, and the reason that I have a hard time with this is because it is difficult to be alone with myself.  What are some things I can do for this?

Hi Anetta, you are always alone with yourself. Anything arising is not you. The one that wants to be alone with herself is not who you are. 

The idea of my post is to help you notice that there's nothing wrong with what you appear to be doing as a body mind - dont look for yourself in that. 

Once you find your true self and rest in it, all will appear as it's supposed to. But wait! It already is, and you already are resting in your true self, because you can never ever escape it no matter how hard you try. (Simply because the one escaping it is not you)

[SOUL]

I prefer the word solitude, alone sounds like wanting to be with others but denied it, solitude sounds more like intentionally being there.

Something as simple as a slight shift in a seemingly insignificant way can wind up being a very impacting change.

[WelcometoReality]

@Annetta You are not going to like this answer but.. meet the fear/anxiety of being alone head on. There is no shortcuts to bypass or transcend fear "negative" emotions.

The funny thing about fear and anxiety is that when you avoid what you are fearful of, the fear will increase. You will get more and more afraid of it. But if you gradually expose yourself to it the fear will lessen.

Edited April 14, 2017 by WelcometoReality
Added some stuff

[Guest Annetta]

Thanks for the advice.  The internet is one of my last attachments.  Bbl

[Azrael]

15 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

Every child is born in a crowd and starts imitating people; what others are doing, he starts doing. He falls into the same miserable situations as others are in, and he starts thinking that this is what life is all about. And he has missed life completely.

That's such a beautiful post and quote from you @Prabhaker. Thanks for the effort!

[Guest Annetta]

I'm back, for a short while.  Being alone is frightening.
During the day is alright, but when it's dark I don't like it.  No bueno.

[Prabhaker]

8 minutes ago, Annetta said:

Being alone is frightening.

If you don´t escape, if you allow fear to be there, if you are ready to face it, if you are not trying somehow to forget it, then you are different.

I faced it because I started living meditatively first. Now I prefer to live alone.

[Shin]

If you don't face loneliness, you'll always be needy towards people in some way.

 

[Guest Annetta]

Mmmmn... 
M'ok.

[Toby]

Yet you don't have to do it all by yourself. If it works better in a group setting (meditation) or in 1on1 to face what comes up, I wouldn't mind trying that.

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Annetta said:

Mmmmn... 
M'ok.

Start some light aerobic exercises, walking , jogging etc so that you can feel good and build self confidence.

[Guest Annetta]

Well, I've been having an extended psychotic episode, and my insurance doesn't kick in until sometime in May.
I have paranoia so I don't like to be alone and it is usually worse at night.

Maybe I'll go make a thread a little later and see if someone might have some advice on what to do for this in the meantime until May comes around.

[Prabhaker]

12 hours ago, Annetta said:

I've been having an extended psychotic episode

Traditional methods of meditation have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many people have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to most of us. 

We are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man. The fact that the old methods don't work doesn't mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques.

A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart.

Remember you have much madness within you. When the madness is released you will feel unburdened, you will feel weightless. You will feel a subtle newness entering in you, as if your childhood has come back. You are again a child: newborn, fresh…. This freshness is very essential; this innocence is very essential if you are to move further.

 Act out all your madnesses ! If you want to scream, scream. If you want to weep, weep. If you want to jump, jump. If you want to dance, dance. If you just want to be like a child – playing with your body, jumping, dancing, screaming – do it!

Do it playfully; don't be serious about it. If you are serious you cannot be totally released. Be playful. Enjoy the madness that is coming out of you. Help it, enjoy it, cooperate with it. If you are really interested in going beyond your madness, this is the way.

The second step is to go mad consciously. Those who are intelligent will go mad consciously; those who are stupid will go on holding. So don't be stupid – be a man of understanding and try it!

Learn Osho dynamic meditation.

http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html