As you lie awake in your bed at night, gazing at the ceiling, even if there is another person or animal lying next to you, it’s so easy to feel separate, even lonely. But loneliness and aloneness are two very different concepts. When you are lonely, you are in a prison of sorts, feeling the pain of your separation. You yearn for another being to help you feel whole, another voice to listen to, another face to gaze upon, another body to feel, another person to soothe your aching feeling o estrangement.

When you are truly alone, you are whole-fully integrated into everything, liberated from your need to cling to another, released from any longing, and finally free to experience the ecstasy of your oneness. In your wholeness you have infinite choices at your fingertips that are not driven by some need to feel completed by another. In a state of true aloneness, joy is reawakened and you feel totally at home in your own skin. When you are in a state of divine aloneness, you can choose to either isolate yourself or connect with another, to surrender to your own magnificence or commune with someone else’s.