Issues are very isolating, aren't they? They leave us in a very separate, isolated place.

In our pain, in our anger, in our anxiety. When we actually meet them, work with them, and come together to transform them, it brings the community together. We realize we're not alone in our process, and then the issues become a gateway to what I would describe as the awakening process. VortexHealingⓇ is not just a healing modality, it's also about awakening. When we transform our issues, they become a path to freedom. That freedom is really about being present in the moment, without the attachment and pull of the issues that really keep us out of the moment. This isn't just about working with our issues, it's about finding presence and being in the moment.

When we're talking about the experience of separation, what better issue to explore than loneliness?

It's a beautiful example of how an issue shows up. It affects us in so many ways, and creates a very deep identity and experience of human pain. I first started looking at the issue of loneliness in 2016/2017. I offer these free healing on my Facebook page called pop-up healings, and the topic of loneliness came up. I was amazed at how quickly that healing filled, and how popular it became. So I began to do a little research. I did a survey to my community about what issues they might want to see an event based around, and loneliness was at the top of the list. And this was pre-pandemic.

Living in New York City, which is where I am, I thought it was so interesting how so many people would still have this experience of loneliness. So I started working with it back then, and then guess what happened? We were all forced into isolation in different ways during the pandemic. It played out differently for different people.

Loneliness is something that we all know at some level in some point of our life.

It's important to bring some love and light to the issue. We're filming this in mid-December, and the holidays can be a very difficult time for people. This issue in particular can be quite challenging. Expectations are high. There are expectations that the family should be together, and that it should be happy. We miss those we've lost. New Year's Eve is rough. It's a lovely holiday, and it's a new beginning and all of that, but in terms of expectations -- where should you go? Who should you be with at that particular moment? It's a lot of 'shoulds'. Deep inside of ourselves, we're often afraid to admit that we don't fit the hallmark card. We're not sure that our story has a happy ending. We're still dealing with all of our stuff on this particular day. So I think the holidays can absolutely be a challenging time.

It's a good time to be kind to each other, and check in on people. Even that person down the street who you don't know so well. So many of us struggle. Whatever is going on for us in life, it sometimes just gets magnified over the holidays.

As a side note, I used to really get into making New Year's resolutions, but I found that my resolutions weren't really about what I believed I should do, they were about what I believed I should be. "I'm going to learn this so I can be smarter", "I'm going to lose weight so I can look better." I'm sure this isn't true for everyone, but my resolutions had a lot of 'shoulds' in them, and they were coming from a place of lack. Looking at that was a hard day, but it's been very useful. A lot of that stuff comes up around the holidays.

I think loneliness can look very different for different people.

There are often two different categories. The loneliness of functional isolation. The loneliness where you just can't see people, which is something we all experienced during the pandemic. Humans need contact. That's not an issue, it's just a natural part of being a human being, and if we don't get it for some reason, it's very hard. So there's a kind of loneliness where we don't get that contact that we need.

However, there's another kind of loneliness, where we are in contact and connected. There are so many ways to stay connected these days, with zoom and phones, and facetime, and whatsapp, and all of that. And yet, despite all of that, we can still feel disconnected. You can be in a crowded room at the best holiday party that ever happened, and still feel incredibly lonely.

Very often, how we feel when we are actually alone comes up, so it can be very hard to be alone. We don't have other people around for validation, support or distraction.

Sometimes being alone is very challenging.

And in that discomfort, we crave connection, and without it we can feel very lost. At the same time, solitude can be incredibly nurturing. By nature, I'm kind of an introvert, and so I feel very rejuvenated when I have a little time alone. I say that like it's a completely awake, evolved stance. It's not. Part of it is kind of a safety issue, because I don't feel like I have to perform or convince anyone that I'm doing well. I just give myself permission to feel how I'm feeling, and that's very helpful. It can go either way, and you can have both going on simultaneously, it's a complicated issue.

In short, loneliness is about feeling that lack of connection with other people.

That lack of connection with life, or with the divine. Loneliness is a place where we don't feel seen. That's why it can happen within a relationship as well. We can be in a relationship and feel like we're not being seen or heard, and in my experience that's probably the worst kind of loneliness. You imagine a relationship is going to solve everything, and a relationship can't fix that deeper kind of loneliness.

Our issues go with us wherever we go. We kind of expect that if we change our circumstances, they'll magically go away. That doesn't happen as often as we think it does. And that can lead to hopelessness, which can lead us into the issue of depression. That's its own episode, or two, or three. In the context of loneliness, sometimes when we're alone these feelings can come to the surface, which can be really hard. Any time we don't feel seen or heard, it's painful to the spirit.

Loneliness can lead us to quite desperate action, because we're trying to kind of override that feeling.

We've also talked about the issues that keep us from knowing intimacy, and vulnerability is a big part of that. In order to know intimacy, one has to have the courage to be vulnerable. When we're talking about loneliness it's an important thing to remember. When we find ourselves in that position where we're experiencing that loneliness -- which is different from solitude. With solitude, you can be alone and not feel lonely.

With any issue, the first step is to recognize it for what it is. Sometimes we just feel bad, or resent people for not being there. So first recognizing that we're feeling disconnected, from that place we're more likely to pick up the phone. If I can realize that if I'm not feeling seen or heard within a relationship, maybe the one I love is also not feeling seen or heard. So maybe I can reach out, and that becomes an important step.

From there, it's an opportunity to check ourselves -- are we really willing to be seen? Am I actually putting mixed signals out into the world about wanting company, but not being willing to be seen and share with you how I'm really doing. A real conversation, with real connection, is the only thing that really satisfies that. How open are we to genuine engagement? Sometimes we realize we're not as open as we thought we are, and that becomes the root cause of our loneliness. We find ourselves talking to a lot of people, but connecting with no one, which is very easy to do, especially these days. With social media, and the way things happen so fast.

Time is so structured, isn't it?

I remember being a kid, and having all of this time to play by the creek, doing nothing. I had time, and it doesn't feel like there isn't that kind of time for us as adults. Maybe that's just my perception, but there seems to be very little time to be alone and ask, "how am I feeling when I'm alone?" Taking the time to check in with yourself, and enjoy the solitude to explore what that is. Then when we do connect with others, it can be from a more genuine place.

I think you can genuinely connect through social media, but we generally don't. It has its own kind of buffer, doesn't it? We can easily hide there. But to use it as a tool for connection, then it's fantastic. There are so many ways to connect, but I think we have to be more present in the moment, and recognize what we're trying to do. To not just check the box of saying hi, but to actually talk to you and share a moment with you. It's become so acceptable to check out of the moment. It's perfectly acceptable to check your texts pretty much anywhere. I remember being at a funeral and seeing someone checking their phone. And no one blinked. It's become more acceptable to check out of the moment, so we have to be a little more conscious to be present, and be with people. Make the effort to see and hear them. Presence responds well to presence. People will see and hear you if they feel seen and heard, and then suddenly that whole dynamic changes, and you're sharing a very intimate moment with someone.

Have you ever been at a party, where everything is just fun, but then suddenly someone reveals something from the heart. The whole dynamic shifts. Suddenly, you're all together, and that's because someone was willing to open their heart. Be vulnerable and share, or ask a poignant question. The whole moment shifts, and you can feel it. It's palpable, and suddenly everyone relaxes. It's magical. It can be with dear friends or casual acquaintances -- that dialogue becomes presence. We feel it -- we know the difference.

Being an introvert, it's not easy to get me to go to a party.

First of all, I have to dress up, which is not something I'm in the habit of doing anymore. So I have to get over myself with that. And then I start talking to people. And most often, there's at least one person who I have a genuine connection with. It's a very enjoyable moment. We connect about what we do for a living, or a family situation, and that willingness to connect makes that magic happen. Suddenly you really see people, and they relax. It can be a common interest, it can be anything. That moment of connection can pull us out of that loneliness. We're sort of going through the motions of pleasant conversation, and then suddenly it changes. It's magical.

How do we address loneliness? What can we do about it? The important thing is to recognize it for what it is, and not feel shame about it. We feel shame about our issues. To admit that you feel lonely within a relationship is extraordinarily difficult, and we judge it. Our judgements really keep us out of meeting and having compassion for ourselves and our issues. I think recognizing and honoring it is the first step. It takes a certain amount of self love to be willing to do that. Once you've recognized it, and met it with compassion, then you can kind of see what it's really about. Am I lonely all the time, or only in one situation? Maybe I've been sitting back waiting for someone to call me, and maybe it's time for me to pick up the phone. Maybe there's something going on with them, some reason they haven't called.

How can I engage with life in a way that I haven't been?

When you ask that question, you can either begin to do it, or recognize why you can't. Which can lead you to wherever else you need to be. "I'm too insecure. I'm too afraid." Wherever it takes you, asking the question becomes an important part of the healing process. We hide -- I think that's an important thing to notice. In our solitude, we hide there. The first thing about recognizing our issues and not feeling shame about them is not hiding from them anymore. Meet it, have compassion for it, and use it as a way of connecting.

That's what I really want to do with this series, is to change our relationship with our issues. Not to just fix them so we feel better, but actually meet them in compassion and take the stigma out of them. Then they become a gateway to finding presence. They become a gateway to our awakening process. We don't wake up beyond our human experience, we wake up through it. Really meeting that loneliness, which is an experience of separation, is a bee line to transformation. It can be very challenging, but it is incredibly profound when we can actually take that breath and explore that fully.

I love solitude, I love being alone.

I find it very nourishing, because in that I drop any expectations. One of my best New Year's Eves ever was one spent alone watching the Star Trek marathon in my small West Village apartment, with my cat, cleaning out closets and stuff because I'm a Virgo and that's what I do for fun. The reason it was so nourishing, and it's still among one of my favorite New Year's Eves, is that I gave myself permission to just feel how I felt. I didn't have to pretend. That for me was very healing. Solitude can really be used like that. But if we're afraid to feel how we're feeling, we quickly get uncomfortable, and feel the need to find something to distract us. If we're not going out to a party or something, we reach for our gadget, or Netflix. We all do all sorts of things all the time to distract ourselves from feeling how we're feeling. It's human nature. We can take advantage of that moment to notice how we're feeling.

Sometimes the scariest thing is not knowing what our feelings will look like.

So we just avoid it. But when we actually stop and identify the feeling, we can bring some love to that. This is an issue worth exploring, because we all know loneliness on some level. We may not know it every day throughout our lives, but we've all been in situations. We can be lonely in general, we can be lonely for a particular someone or something. We can be lonely because we find ourselves in a different phase of life. It's something we all know, and therefore we should have compassion for. It can be so difficult to connect. It's amazing that we actually do! Through all of our issues and all of the pain that we know in form, it's actually extraordinary that we still manage to connect and to know intimacy, but we do.

Connection is a human need.

When we don't get it, it can be very hard. It can be pervasive in our experience of life. To recognize that takes a lot of compassion for ourselves. And if we can't have compassion for ourselves, we can't really have compassion for others. It starts here.

When we feel lonely, we feel like we're in isolation, and wonder why someone isn't calling us. But in our own pain, we don't really think about how the other person is doing. Maybe that person isn't calling because they can't. Or maybe they have something going on. We don't think that way when we're in the midst of it, but reaching out can change the whole dynamic when it's done from a place of love.

Loneliness comes from our deepest experience of self -- that's where it originates. That deepest sense of disconnection.

And it can't be satisfied by distracting ourselves by talking to people. It has to be met in compassion and love directly. What is the place in us where we feel disconnected, from ourselves, from life, from God. Somewhere deep inside of there is a sense of disconnection, and it's bringing compassion and healing to that that transforms the whole dynamic. When we feel disconnected from ourselves, we end up sending mixed signals to the world. See this, but don't see that. That deeper connection is impossible when we're hiding our own pain. That sense of disconnection from self, life, or however you feel it -- that's where it all begins and ends in the transformative experience.

In research about loneliness, I came upon an African proverb: "If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel farther, travel together." I think that is so profound in describing our experience of life, and our willingness to be open to the experience of sharing our life with others. We have to be open to that. We have to open our hearts for that to happen -- the world won't come to us in our place of isolation. We have to be willing to open our heart, which is what makes it so hard, but also so fulfilling. That's what makes it so magical.

If you want to read more about the issue of loneliness, you can see Lorraine’s interview on the subject on the cable access show Oneness and Wellness here.