Prison of Loneliness

Question

Despite having what most people would consider close friends, a loving marriage and great kids, I regularly feel unseen, misunderstood and unloved. I have tried everything imaginable to bring more love into my life, but nothing seems to work. Feeling unloved is the source of my greatest pain and suffering. How can I escape from what seems like an eternal prison of loneliness?

Answer

The reason you've made so little progress overcoming your prison of isolation is that you are trying to escape from the wrong cell. What is really keeping you in bondage is not the shortage of love you are receiving, but the lack of love you are giving. Not fully loving is a significantly greater source of suffering in your life - a thousand fold more excruciating than any perception of not being loved.

Ideally, the human heart is meant to operate like a swinging door with love freely flowing in and out. Currently, the entrance to your heart is jammed due to a fear that the love you extend will not be returned in kind. Not having love perfectly returned is associated (in your illusory thinking) with deep feelings of rejection, pain and vulnerability.

Consequently, although you are anxious to have love enter your life, you have ceased truly extending it towards others. Such a painful state of held back love is so familiar to you that you no longer recognize the great suffering it regularly causes you and everyone else you encounter. To compound the situation, the people you commonly attract often hold similar fears around love. Hence, they are also waiting for perfect love to present itself before they will risk opening their hearts.

In order to break through such a stalemate, start extending love with absolutely no expectations in mind. In other words, open your heart to others who (in your current estimation) cannot or will not return love perfectly, don't deserve your love or perhaps don't even recognize such gifts when they are offered. And, if you really want to blast open your prison of loneliness, start loving (secretly within your own heart to begin with) those who actively reject or scorn such overtures.

Then and only then, will you understand perfect Love - realize it is not a random occurrence for the lucky few or something God magically bestows on those deemed worthy. Instead, it is a decision - a choice that is always available to you. As such, the experience of love can never be taken from you (or even altered) because it is eternally yours to control.

Such understanding will finally free up the door to your heart - allowing it to swing wide in terms of both giving and receiving love. Then, to your amazement and surprise, you may discover that others around you have suddenly become more loving as well. At that point, you will be able to truly cherish and appreciate such love, not because it is personally needed, expected or required, but because it is simply a beautiful gift from God!

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