I feel like I really have needs that have to be met. When I don’t spend enough intimate time with people, I feel a white wall of disconnection and loneliness. It feels like a real need to have a certain amount of intimate social connection. It feels like the social needs I have have to be seen, respected, and steps must to be taken to meet these needs or I am drained, sleeping all the time and not functioning well.
How do I reconcile noticing and taking real steps to meet these needs on the relative level, and yet somehow reconcile it with the non-dual message, the teaching that says there is not a separate self here, that what I really am is everything, so I shouldn't need this things to feel normal, alive, and not drained?
All teachings are misunderstood… until they are no longer needed. As a seeker of understanding we by definition misinterpret the teachings and we thus may attempt to overlay them onto our lives in ways they were not intended.
It can be said that this misunderstanding is inevitable, perhaps even necessary, and that the discomfort that results from this brings voice to our spiritual explorations. As individuals, we are prone to believe that certain thought patterns, or meditation sequences, or mantras, or teachers, etc, are necessary for understanding to occur. This belief is really quite silly… and wonderfully unavoidable... until it fall away (or perhaps more clearly: not picked up).
When the individual begins to seriously consider spiritual teachings, we study them from the perspective of separation, that sense that I am an individual, independent and separate from you, another individual (or if you prefer, that I am separate from the tree over there and from these words right here). Soon we hear that we are not supposed to feel separate and so quite unintentionally we, the individual, attempt to construct a sense of ourselves that is separate from our sense of being an individual… and that of course creates yet another sense of separation (albeit, it appears to the mind to be different) and we remain trapped in our spiritual seeking.
When we believe we are distinct and separate from our world, any spiritual teaching, including the non-dual consideration, is by definition just another conceptual framework that we will overlay upon our sense of separation. This is very difficult for the seeking mind to accept and thus the efforting continues and we find more and more subtle ways to remain in the belief that we are separate.
Let’s look at your question from what you term “the relative level” and see where it takes us. After all, if we are “everything”, isn’t the relative perspective no less valid, no less “true” than a more “pure” consideration? This will allow us to abandon the non-dual legalize and instead trust our own knowing, our own wisdom as we explore your question.
When we experience the loneliness and sense of disconnection that you speak of, our mind overlays a story on it (in fact, many stories). Perhaps we feel that we are missing our friends, or that we are not lovable, or that our life-situation is not adequate and we feel trapped, etc. There is nothing wrong with these stories, these feeling and sensations… yet when we believe the story to be the ultimate truth, we misunderstand our discomfort and our mind loops back upon itself, feeding the story until it becomes a belief, until it becomes our reality.
“I am lonely. I am depressed. I am disconnected.” Let’s try changing the wording just a little, while still remaining true to the experience: “I feel lonely. I feel depressed. I feel disconnected.” No less true, right? Yet by substituting “I feel” for “I am” we have discovered that indeed I am not lonely, depressed, or disconnected, but instead I am feeling these things and thus I am probably more than just these feelings.
Taking it another step forward: “I am experiencing a sense of loneliness, depression, and disconnection.” Or even clearer: “I am experiencing something that I translate into loneliness, depression, and disconnection.”
While we are at it, we can also describe our experience more fully by including some other parts of our experiencing: “I am feeling the bed beneath me. I am hearing the traffic in the street. I wonder what time it is.” With each of these subtle shifts in wording, we have now acknowledged that we aren’t loneliness itself, nor depression, nor disconnection, but instead we are experiencing what we have labeled as such, and we are also experiencing other things as well (although our attention isn’t as focused on them).
We can of course take this farther, and farther, parsing our experience down and away from the translations, and into the simplicity of experiencing itself and thus “away” from the overlay of the stories that our mind paints our experiencing to be. “The area above my stomach feels tight, heavy.” “I feel a certain pressure behind my eyes.” “I am noticing a ruminative pattern, familiar thoughts coming into my awareness.” etc. We can even remove the "I" from our language and recognize that there is a tingling and an appearance of a thought that says "it is above my stomach" (after all, it is only a thought that "identifies" its as "above" "my" "stomach").
When we follow this deeper and do this exercise a number of times, we begin to discover it holds true for everything. Absolutely everything. When we really allow our experience, we end up recognizing that all we really know is the experiencing itself (and all else, including this writing, is just a translation). We discover that each thought, or more clearly, that the experiencing of a patterning that we label “a thought” … is nothing more than a “thought” (or a firing of synapses, or energy, or…), and when we remain true to this exploration, we discover that the thought actually has no connection with the previous thought… and instead, it is simply part of the experiencing that appears to suggest that it is connected!
Our minds want to understand this experiencing, to put language to it. Yet in cannot be understood by the mind. The closest we can come to explain it is . . . and here our words fail us. Only silence remains.
So when we recognize this, the teaching begins to make sense. We discover that there is no problem with wanting to be with our friends. Or with feeling depressed because we are not with them. Nor is there even a problem with the silly stories that play in our heads about this or that. The stories themselves are no problem. No problem at all. They are simply a patterning that is appearing. And when they are no problem, what remains to maintain them?
When the stories play, let yourself notice that you in fact don’t fully believe them (although it may seem that you do). Let yourself notice that when a story appears, your attention moves to it. Notice that this awareness is part of the experiencing.
It’s not that we shouldn’t have this need, or that need. If it is appearing, it is appearing. What could we possibly do about that?! We are not the thoughts. We are not the feelings. After all, isn’t this “I” that I believe myself to be, also that which is noticing the thoughts, feelings, sensations?
What is noticing the noticing? Become curious about that.
