Braving The Wilderness: High Lonesome...

Chapter 3:4

High Lonesome: A Spiritual Crisis

This chapter would shed light on why our quest for true belonging require that we brave some serious wilderness.

Music like all art, gives pain and our most wrenching emotions voice, language and form. So it can be recognized and shared. The magic of high lonesome sound is the magic of all art. The ability to both capture our pain and deliver us from it at the same time.

Cynicism and distrust has a stronghold on our hearts. And rather than continuing to move towards a vision of shared power among people, we're witnessing a backslide to a vision of power that is the key to autocrat's power over people.

"Spirituality is recognising and celebrating that we're all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion..."

Addressing this crisis will require a tremendous amount of courage. For the moment, most of us are either making the choice to protect ourselves from conflict, discomfort and vulnerability by staying quiet or picking sides and in process slowly and paradoxically adopting the behaviour of the people we're fighting. Either way, the choices we're making to protect our beliefs and ourselves are leaving us disconnected, afraid and lonely.

Reasons Behind The Crisis

Sorting Ourselves Out: Sorting leads us to making assumptions about the people around us, which in turn fuels disconnection.

Selecting Likeminded friends and neighbours and separating ourselves as much as possible from people whom we think of as different from us has not delivered that deep sense of belonging that we are hardwired to crave.

To understand this, we have to better understand what it means to be lonely and how the loneliness epidemic is affecting the way we show up with one another.

On The Outside Looking In:

John Cacioppo defines loneliness as "perceived social isolation".

We experience loneliness when we feel disconnected maybe we've been pushed to the outside of a group that we value, or we're lacking a sense of True belonging.

At the heart of loneliness is the absence of meaningful social interaction - An intimate relationship, friendships, family gatherings, or even community or work group connections.

"Loneliness and Being Alone are Very Different Things."

Being alone or inhabiting solitude can be a powerful and healing thing.

You get the lonely feeling in places you don't feel alive with connection. Place can also hold those feelings of disconnection too not just people.

According to Caccioppo "as members of a social species, we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.

To grow to adulthood as a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it's to become the one on whom others can depend.

Loneliness is not just a sad condition it's a dangerous one.

To combat loneliness, we must first learn how to identify it and to have the courage to see that experience as a warning sign should be to find connection. Finding connection doesn't mean to join a bunch of groups or checking in with dozens of friends.

It's not the quantity of friends but the quality of  few relationships that actually matters.

Fear Is How We Got Here:

Fear of vulnerability, fear of getting hurt, fear of the pain of disconnection, fear of criticism, and failure, fear of conflict, fear of not measuring up.

We have to find our way back to one another or fear wins. Its going to require vulnerability and the willingness to choose courage over comfort. We'll have to get through or learn how to become the wilderness.

- PEOPLE ARE HARD TO HATE CLOSE UP, MOVE IN:

"Approaching pain head on is terrifying"

Most of us were not taught how to recognize pain, name it and be with it. Our families and culture believed that the vulnerability that it takes to acknowledge pain was weakness, so we were taught anger, rage and denial instead. But what we know now is that when we deny our emotions, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain sometimes owning our pain and bearing witness to struggle means getting angry. 

When we deny our ourselves the right to be angry, we deny our pain.

We all have the right & need to feel and own our anger. It's an important human experience. And its critical to recognize that maintaining any level of rage, anger or contempt over a long period of time is not sustainable. 

Anger is a catalyst. Holding on to it would make us exhausted and sick.

Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; Externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection. It's an emotion we need to transform into something lifegiving; Courage, love, change, compassion, justice or sometimes anger can mask a far more difficult emotion like grief, regret, or shame and we need to use it to dig into what we're really feeling. Either-way, anger is a powerful catalyst but a life-sucking companion.

Courage is forged in pain but not all pain.

Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate. Anger that is never transformed becomes resentment and bitterness.

There Are Always Boundaries Even In The Wilderness

When we commit to getting closer, we're committing to eventually experiencing real, face to face conflict. In person conflict is always hard and uncomfortable. And when it comes to family, it's even harder and more painful. Maintaining the courage to stand alone when necessary in the midst of family or community feels like an untamed wilderness.

"The price is high. The reward is great"

- Is there a line in the wilderness between what behaviour is tolerable and what isn't?

The reward may be great, but do I have to put up with someone tearing me down or questioning my actual right to exist? Is there a line that shouldn't be crossed? 

The answer is YES!!!!

The Courage To Embrace Our Humanity

We must never tolerate dehumanization. When we promote dehumanizing images, we diminish our own humanity in the process. 

When we dehumanize people, it says nothing at all about the people we're attacking, it does however, says a lot about who we are and the degree to which we're operating in our integrity.

Conflict Transformation:

In addition to the courage to be vulnerable, and the willingness to practice our BRAVING skills, moving closer means we need tools for navigating conflict.

Learn how to navigate conflicts of opinion in a way that deepens mutual understanding. Even if two people's skill disagree, they could actually have increased mutual understanding, greater mutual respect and better connection, but still completely disagree. This is very different from avoiding a conversation and not learning more about the other party.

Rules you can live by;

1. I'm doing the best I can

2. I will allow myself to be seen

3. Go further. Don't be afraid. Put it all out there. Don't leave anything on the floor.

4. I will not be a mystery.

This is who I am, This is where I'm from, This is my mess, This is what it means to belong to myself!!!

#Ibelongtomyself...