Good Morning and welcome Dr Ing’s Sunday soul connection. As always, we like to begin our time together by setting the intention with Naturally 7 and Let it be.
As always I like to applaud you for taking the next 45 minutes or so out of your busy Sunday as we link hearts and minds across the airwaves to deepen down in our connection and communion with the ground about being God in us as us.
Today I want to look at loneliness. I've said it before now and I will reiterate again, loneliness, being alone and solitude are not the same thing. Often you will see or hear people interchanging these words, but they are completely different.
The number of people that are experiencing loneliness in the UK and in the US is quite phenomenal. The figures we have something like 1 in 14 people in the UK and 1 in 5 in the US experience extreme loneliness.
You think with all that is going on and all that is available to us that loneliness would not be so prevalent, and yet it is.
I love to quote that I shared yesterday by Vivek Murthy who said “Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It's distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you.”
You see, loneliness is a state of mind It's an emotion that we experience when we feel disconnected and separated from other human beings. Those who feel lonely or experiencing loneliness also feel sometimes that they're not understood that they’re unwanted or feel they’ve been abandoned, or there's an emptiness within them that can't be filled or they feel that they're not worthy.
It’s not just the older generation we think of as being lonely, yes, they experience loneliness for different reasons. Whether their partners or spouses have died or many of their friends have died or they’re in a home or whatever it is… but the data shows that there are higher rates of loneliness between 18 to 30 year olds. I was quite shocked when I read that.
I was talking with some friends yesterday, and we were talking about how now technology is limiting connection or interaction with one another.
People who had children during the COVID lockdown only know how to interact with the screen of the telephone or iPad that was often put in front of them whilst their parents were trying to work from home or do schooling with the other children or whatever were the other distractions and so they don't know that connection between people that we have and that is so important and so fundamental and necessary for every human. You cannot get the nuance or energy from a computer screen /telephone or iPad screen of when someone is laughing or joking you cannot feel it. There's an exchange and energetic exchange we have when we have that literal interactional connection.
As I travelled on the tube this week the majority of people had their heads looking down at their phone and it’s as if we have come become a society and culture where we interact more with our phones than we do with each other.
I'm not anti technology, I'm anti that disconnection that is happening between us; the isolation that we find ourselves in. People don't want to give you eye contact. They kind of look somewhat scared if you smile at them, much more so if you speak or say hello to them.
This is not a world we need or want. We need to be able to remember occasionally if only, we belong to one another, the Energy the Life-force, the Spirit, the Presence that is in me, is in everyone else. If I'm to honour that, then I need to be able to connect with that in every individual human being. Norman Cousins said “The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.” I think when we can shatter our own individual loneliness we reach out to others and help shatter theirs
Steven Wilson says “we are living in dystopia in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness and dysfunction.” This virtual reality that so many of us are now addicted to is really disconnecting us from our humanity.
Our lack of interactions and interchanges with fellow humans is affecting us mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Make no mistake loneliness is a killer. People are committing suicide out of loneliness followed by depression followed by a sense of why bother? And it is my my intention, the reasons why I share the things that I share with you on Sunday, is always to encourage you as well as myself because I always think whatever the message is equally meaningful and relevant to me as it is to who I'm sharing it with.
You individually may not feel lonely or may you may have bounced back from it. So let’s look at what do we do and how can we address that?
How can we each do our part even either alone or with that of another? It's the little and sometimes simple things.But sometimes even the little simple things can be hard for us to even think about. Because sometimes we're so caught up in the energy of whatever it is we're feeling that we can't see with clarity, or we can't see a way out, or we're too far gone in our apathy to even want to do anything.
Here's the thing. Loneliness is not something that is out of the ordinary. As I said before, all of us may at some point in time, feel it or have felt it. So let's just accept it normal. There's nothing peculiar or anything to be ashamed about to acknowledge that, and it's important that we also recognise its effects because how it impacts us is one of the ways in recognising that perhaps even if you haven't given voice to, or acknowledged that you might be lonely. You might not be sleeping good or your sleep is interrupted throughout the night. Or you’ve taken up self destructive habits such as excessive drinking, or as they like to call it recreational drugs.
Once you've noticed or recognised that you’re experiencing loneliness one of the ways to cure it, is perhaps to nurture or make new relationships. It is so easy to let relationships fall by the wayside; because any relationship be it social, personal, intimate, requires effort.
It requires that we make an effort. Today I had planned to go and see a friend and then changed my mind. I received a text from a girlfriend. I've met this girlfriend on Wednesday we had lunch we had a really nice time catching up. We hadn't seen each other for a long time. And I text her to thank her and I haven't heard back but I didn't think anything of it because I know sometimes people need to do something and if you don't do it in that moment it slips you but then on Saturday, I got a text from my son with her phone saying that on the Thursday following after we met on Wednesday she became ill and started dropping in and out of consciousness, they rushed her to a hospital where they think she may have cancer on the brain. They’re waiting for an MRI scan, but in one of her lucid moments she had asked her son to contact me.
I was really taken aback when I read his text. It struck me how we never know what's around the corner, and I text my friend whom I cancelled and said I’ll be coming. We have to consciously work on our relationships and friendships. It's not I'm doing it because I feel lonely. I'm doing it because I recognise the importance of how we don't know what's around the corner. How important it is to make the effort and sometimes I think it's all too easy not to be bothered. So it’s important to reconnect with friends if you've lost touch, or start making new friends, join meet-up groups or take up a hobby or an evening night class now they’re opening back.
Don't allow the excuse of you don't know anything or know anyone to stop you. One of the things I loved after leaving schools I used to go to evening classes where I learned French, pottery and Latin American dances; some aspects of those skills I still retain.
On the Sunday Soul we’re always talking about affirmations and positive self talk. Yes, it's too easy when you're lonely to give your attention and your focus on to the very thing that you're experiencing and wallow in that. We are the captains of our own ship that we are sailing it's up to us to navigate with what or how we are allowing our self talk. Whether it’s negative, or constructive, destructive or positive. It’s also important to recognise that boredom plays a part in being lonely and you can you can negate that by finding something to do such as volunteering. Volunteering is a wonderful opportunity to meet people, to contribute to give of yourself, your time and your energy. I volunteer not as often as I maybe should but at least I volunteer once a month. Now that they’re open again and it's interesting to meet people and do things and feeling you’re being of use.
Poem
Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
(Hafiz, 1320 – 1389)
Sacred Text
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Psalm 25:16
Joshua, the Old Testament hero best known for his conquest of Jericho, started out as the right hand of Moses. Moses had led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, but when he died, leaving Joshua in charge, the Hebrews were still lost in the desert on their way to the promised land.
The Hebrews often rebelled against leadership, and Joshua, like Moses before him, often felt lonely and discouraged-particularly after the death of his friend and teacher. But God himself encouraged him with these words: "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you." -Joshua 1:5.
Another Biblical figure who understood the loneliness of abandonment was Paul. Paul was one of the early evangelists in the New Testament. He worked to spread the gospel among the Jews, who saw early Christians as heretics, and among the Gentiles who saw the early Christians as only the smallest and most recent of a number of competing religions.
As Paul fought persecution to spread the gospel, he found that his friends deserted him when he needed their help. But he remained strong: "No one stood by me the first time I defended myself; all deserted me. … But the Lord stayed with me and gave me strength." -2 Timothy 4:16
STORY
PRIDE MONTH FROM PINK NEWS
According to the Office for National Statistics, almost one in 14 Brits say they are lonely, a figure that increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
Research shows it’s an issue that impacts the LGBTQ+ community more acutely – before the pandemic, 21 per cent of queer people felt loneliness “very often” or daily, according to LGBT HERO’s LGBTQ+ Lockdown Wellbeing Report. During the lockdown, this more than doubled.
Finding a partner and finding friends who share your identity is statistically harder, so that can be isolating on a very literal level.”
Coming out can be especially isolating, Fountaine added.
“The journey to understand your identity can be very lonely.
“This rejection can become internalised, so then we’re less likely to seek relationships or trust those around us.”
The pandemic left many feeling more isolated than ever before.
Among them was Ibtisam Ahmed, head of policy and research at the LGBT Foundation.
The 30-year-old lived in Nottingham during the first lockdown with his partner. As a queer person of colour and a migrant, Ahmed felt despondent as he became “disconnected from others who understand” his struggles.
“I lost a huge safety net by no longer being able to see friends and loved ones with my lived experience, which was compounded by growing stress in how the pandemic was also creating ill-will towards people of colour,” he told PinkNews.
“I am a QTIPoC migrant while my partner is white British, and there are some experiences that the two of us are unable to fully explain to each other.”
Ahmed slipped into solitude during lockdown. Soon even a trip to the local pharmacy to pick up medication felt too risky. “I became scared to go out because I noticed an uptick in racism,” he said
BODY MEDITATION
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SUNDAY SOUL CONNECTION PRAYER
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MOVEMENT PRAYER 2
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BUDDHIST REFLECTION
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RUMINATION
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Set your life on fire. Rumi
Benediction
Beloved Mother Father God
Thank you for always being with us even in the midst of our loneliness and when we feel separate from you.
Touch our hearts to remember that there is nowhere where You are not, and that we should always seek You first.
Comfort our souls, calm our minds so that our Spirit may consciously and continuously be nourished by your indwelling Presence.
Song - Anna Golden, SOS