The radical invitation of aloneness

Hello everyone. This is Padma Menon from moving archetypes. In this video we are going to explore aloneness, why it's radical, and why it is necessary in archetypal self inquiry. I'm going to consider how aloneness is positioned in our popular culture. And I'm also going to share a couple of important archetypes which will help us understand aloneness from an archetypal perspective. These are the archetypes of Dhumavathi, the great goddess who is presented as an elderly woman, and Makara, the mysterious deep sea creature, and I'm hoping that they will illuminate the role of aloneness in an archetypal self-inquiry. Before I proceed further, please don't forget to like, subscribe, and share your comments. And if you liked this video, please share it with others who you think may be interested in these themes.

The popular proposition of the times that we live in is that human beings are social animals. And therefore, the best way for us to thrive and to be healthy is that we are in company, whether that is in the form of having a partner or a family, or being part of a community, a village, a town, a city, state, a nation, or being part of like-minded groups that share ideologies and values, but we are really told that it is in company that we thrive and that we are doing well. Indeed, sometimes even our very sense of belonging is about belonging, whether we belong in a relationship belong in a family belong in a community, or belong to a political entity, but we are told that even our very sense of belonging comes from something about being in a company or having a position or having a connection to a company.

Even spiritual traditions have changed to accommodate these propositions. So you find that in many spiritual traditions seems there is also an emphasis put on community and gathering, coming together finding a sense of belonging, finding people that think like you, finding people with whom you can share certain activities. So that becomes a very important way of even affirming a spiritual practice or an inquiry. So where does the proposition of aloneness fit amongst these suggestions and these propositions, all of which are true? I'm not saying that they are not true. I'm saying, Where does the aloneness find a place in our in amongst these propositions?

What I find is that generally, even people who are advocating for aloneness, they are often people that are in company are in structures of company themselves. So they may be partnered, or they may be part of a family that is supportive, or they may be surrounded by a group or a community that buys into their philosophy. So it's, I find that it's often quite easy to advocate for aloneness, when you're not materially in that experience yourself.

Having spent periods in my life alone, I find that the experience of being the single entity is a really challenging one. There is nothing very sentimental or romantic about it. And there is also nothing very heroic about it. Because when you go through life, in the ordinary activities, doing things by yourself, nobody is rewarding you for being heroic. Rather, people might even look upon you with a certain puzzlement.

And isn't it true that when we propose aloneness, there is almost a degree of suspicion, in our usual lives, when we say that a person likes their own company, or they keep to themselves, we are often implying that there's something abnormal about it, that there might even be something sinister about it. If you look at many narratives about people that are evil, they're often people that live in solitude, that keep to themselves, and they don't like the company of others. And these are the people that are looked upon with great suspicion, or even said to be evil, or do things that are not supportive to the community. So there is a degree of shame in being alone. There's a degree where you think it is a failure. And I'm speaking from personal experience, people might think there's something that you're something lesser, it's like a deficit model, that there's something that needs to be fixed before you are whole again.

This idea that wholeness is somehow to be revealed through aloneness is a very difficult thing, to practice, in a culture, where there's so much emphasis on being with someone, and being in a community where these become the units of social interaction, it is very difficult to advocate true aloneness. So what happens in many circumstances is that aloneness becomes an event. So for example, you may go off on a retreat, where you might spend some time alone, it may be a silent retreat, where you're encouraged to attend to yourself to be aware of yourself and your body and your sensations or then it could be that you are going away to retreat to a very different place to an unfamiliar place. So these become isolated events. And the assumption is that then you somehow come back and it is more important that you then come back and you're in company again, and that you belong and that you subscribe and that you participate in the in the community and in the group.

So here there is an either or choice. Either you can go away, take some time out and you're alone. or you are in the community and in the group, and you're participating. It's like the twain shall never meet.

In an archetypal tradition, which is, of course, always about bringing polarities into coexistence, which means it is always this and that and that and that, and not this or that. The invitation is that aloneness co exists with being in company being in a relationship. Because it is not about the outcome of aloneness, we're not focusing on well, if I am going to take up this invitation for aloneness, what is going to happen? Am I still going to be maintaining the status quo? Will that mean that I will drop out will that mean that my friends will drop away or my family will drop away or my partner will drop away? Because that is a instrumentality, which an archetypal tradition asks us to relinquish right at the outset. We can't come into an archetypal tradition, with a conditionality or an instrumentality. So we can't do this thinking, well, perhaps I will be a better person, which means I might be better in my relationship. If I do this, neither can we think worry about, if I come here, will that mean that I will lose the status quo, the emphasis or the focus is on the need for aloneness, to unravel one's own authenticity. That is, if there is any purpose that is the purpose of the practice of aloneness and the practice of solitude.

Let me illustrate this with a really powerful archetype, which is the archetype of Goddess Dhumavathi. In archetypal traditions across the world, there are always these ancient deities that are kind of loners, if you will, they are these beings that are living solitude in his lives, and they are quite fulfilled with that. So it's not that they are wandering about miserable or suffering because of that solitude in their life. But there is a kind of sovereignty and fulfillment in this lives that they lead, those lives are still very dynamic. They're very expressive, they're very manifest.

But there is a kind of completeness in the way that these deities manifest themselves. And one of them is Goddess Dhumavathi, who is supposed to live in a very desolate regions, far away from humans, or far away from villages or gatherings or communities. One thing that is common in many of these deities is that they do live in places that are far from village or community. So for example, they may live in the forest, or they might live in the cremation ground like Goddess Kali. So Dhumavathi is the goddess who lives in very desolate places, often places where there might be decay. They might be the pungency, of rot and decay, when nobody really wants to go.

She is manifested as an old or an ageing woman, with an aging body, very different to how we might consider goddesses. And yet at the same time, she still holds her sensuality. And she has incredible power, which again, we don't associate with an ageing body, we always think of age as a decline of power. But here, she is incredibly powerful and sensual. And yet it is not a sensuality or power that seeks anything outside of herself. So she doesn't need to dominate somebody with the power, nor is she desiring for someone with a sensuality. Rather it's a celebration of her own beingness.

So Dhumavathi presents us with a lot of paradoxes. And this coming together of many paradoxes, is at the heart of the invitation to aloneness because when we confront the majority, all of our usual ways, even of understanding what is divine, of understanding what is power, understanding what is beauty? What is sensuality? We have to abandon all of that, because none of those assumptions help us to encounter the morality or to act to even sense what is the meaning, or what is the intelligence of her manifestation.

The word Dhuma in the name Dhumavathi, means smoke. For me, she is the smokiness about this dimension of our consciousness or our beingness. That dimension, which confounds all our labels and definitions. And this dimension is not somewhere outside of us. It is within our own bodies, it is that part of our being that we exile into desolation, because we have no tools with which to encounter this domain. Because all of the tools that we have the labels, the names, the definitions, the conclusions, the ideologies, none of these are going to help us to make this encounter, to go to Dhumavathi, and to dance with her in any meaningful way. Rather, we are actually in terror, or in fear of this invitation.

And that's what brings me to the second archetype, which is Makara, where the fear element becomes more important. Makara is an archetypal sea creature, a deep sea creature, which is a combination of many different creatures. So for example, it can be a combination of a crocodile, a snake, a lion, and an elephant, or it can be a combination of some other creatures. But what it is, is, it is this form that we simply cannot accept as reality. Because it, it shatters our conclusions about reality. And that is the greatest terror that we have. It's not the fear of all the things that we are usually afraid of. But the deepest fear is having this material encounter with something that completely demolishes all our conclusions about reality, what we think is reality is challenged. And that, of course, includes who we think we are in this reality, right from the human being label.

I will give you another example, which is from a more not an archetypal realm, and maybe that will help you to feel into it a little bit more. This is about how archaeologists are discovering increasingly evidence of human or human like life 10s of 1000s of years before, we have milestones, the beginning of Homosapien or the human being, as we call them today. So for example, there was a discovery in this cave in South Africa, of these people they're called Homo Naledi, very similar to human beings, to Hom sapiens. But they don't have the biological or the physical characteristics that we attribute to Homo sapiens, including the size of the brain. But what was absolutely shocking for them to find is that Homo Naledi practiced ritual burial. So this consciousness that is philosophical, spiritual or archetypal, has always been attributed to the superior intelligence of Homo sapiens. In fact, that is how we define human being that connected to that reflexive intelligence. And here it is 10s of 1000s of years before Homo sapiens, this evidence of an intelligence that also had this philosophical or ritual or spiritual reflexivity.

There has been a lot of controversy about this discovery and a lot of opposition. And what I see in in this discussion now, I don't know about whether it's true or not. But what has been interesting to me in this debate, is that what people express is a shock and terror about what does it say about Homo sapiens or human beings. That is the terror. And the resistance stems from that place, that this is dismantling the reality that we have so carefully constructed, over 1000s of years, about humans and about the supremacy of the human intelligence about it appearing at a certain point in the history of life, and that it was something of a spectacular and special movement. And when something challenges all of these deeply embedded assumptions of reality, there is absolute terror, absolute rejection, and there is a kind of religiosity that emerges in the resistance.

And again, I'm not an expert, I'm not an archaeologist. So I don't know the what is the evidence for and against it. But I'm simply speaking as someone from the Rasa philosophy, what the sensation that I feel is infusing the debate. And this is what I am alluding to, in the encounter with the Makara, it is primarily that challenge of having something there materially that challenges everything that we have heeded to believed assumed, that upon which we have based our reality, even our definition of who we are, right from the level of human being, not even the level of I Am, this person, or I am this role, not at least not even at that level, something far deeper than that.

And what I have found in these archetypal practices is, is that in that moment of encounter, if we are provided a technology of being in that encounter, that is where paradoxically, the revelation of our essence, unfolds, that essence in us, that is before all of these labels and definitions, and in fact, is not referenced by any of these labels and definitions. Just as the Makara is completely self referential, just as Dhumavathi is completely about herself. We can't just call her an old woman, because she has power, she has sensuality, she has a certain sovereignty, none of those things that we associate with an old woman or an old body. And it's the same with the Makara. We can't call the Makara a reptile, we can't call the Makara a mammal, we can't call the Makara a big cat, because it's a combination of everything. It is a being it is an event, it is a moment where we taste something that is terrifying, because we can't, it's like smoke, we can't hold on to it. It just you know how smoke, you can't hold smoke, it just seeps through our fingers when we try to hold on. When we try to grab it with meaning or with word or with a theory or with a concept, it simply just flows out between our fingers, like smoke.

But these ritual traditions, many of the ritual archetypal traditions were essentially technologies of invoking and unraveling this encounter. So for example, the archetypal dance that I have studied and that I offer it is where we are invited into an unfamiliar experience on all levels. It is unfamiliar at the bodily level. Because we are in movements and positions that our body is unfamiliar with. It is unfamiliar at the sensation level, because we're not talking about our usual emotions of anger or fear. But these are the continuum of those feelings right down into its archetypal level. Even the narratives, the archetypal narratives are not familiar because they bring together polarities and paradoxes. And they all coexist in a way that we can't sort out and neatly arrange with our minds, which is what we usually do.

And all of this is held together with an enjoyment. So even though it recognizes that there is going to be fear, there is going to be uncertainty, there is going to be unease. And there is full recognition of that. But that recognition is balanced by the creative elements of it, the enjoyment of creative expression, the enjoyment as an aesthetic practice, that is about celebrating the beauty of expression, the beauty that is celebrated there is the beauty of the expression, and not the beauty about the story or that particular narrative, but it's the beauty of expression, how do we express this encounter, and in that expression, we receive the intelligence that taste of that part of our consciousness of a being that is not available to us through any mirroring. We don't see it anywhere outside of us, it is not referential to anything, but itself, but its own movement and expression, just like the Makara. So if anything, we mirror the Makara we mirror Dhumavathi That is that mirroring.

And that brings us into this wonderful paradox of aloneness, and being connected in the same moment. Th deity or the archetypal aspect is absolutely vital. Aloneness is not to be invoked without that archetypal deity, consciousness and support, because it is that consciousness it is that invocation that provides that connection. At the same time, as we are encountering the terror, the fear, the unease of that aloneness, even the suffering, the suffering, so there is loneliness, aloneness, solitude, and connection, all in equal measure. And what it has done for me, is to provide this template in my daily life, one of which is devotion. Devotion has been a very important aspect of connecting to my solitude, to the aloneness, to those moments of contemplative solitude.

The devotion piece is really important, and I just don't mean devotion in a transactional religious sense that we are offered a lot of the time, but rather I mean devotion as a celebration of nature, that simple connections we can make every day a connection to earth, connection to birds, or connection to trees, a connection to the ground, those kinds of devotional connections, that really tethers me when I am in moments of solitude, and aloneness, and even when I am in the suffering of loneliness, which as I said, is inevitable. There, it's not an all positive proposition here. Rather, as it in an archetypal sense, all these experiences coexist. And what helps us to be in these experiences and to receive the intelligence and teaching is that devotional piece, that connection to the archetype, whether it's to the Makara or the divinity of the Makara, or the Divinity of Dhumavathi, or the divinity of nature, and that's the template that the dancing provides me, which helps me to attend to the solitude, the contemplative solitude, the contemplative aloneness, and sometimes the suffering of the loneliness, that is part of that invocation, with presence, and with an openness to attending to the intelligence and the teaching that emerges, and that is the teaching about my own authenticity, about who I am at the deepest, primordial level of my being very deep beneath the labels and the roles and anything else that I'm called upon to be in, in my ordinary life. And then I can be in all of those labels, and connected to the depths, which really brings a completely different taste and experience to the ordinary roles and ordinary tasks and ordinary things that we all have to do in our lives every day.

I'm not saying that this is something magical, that once you do this, that you that's why I said aloneness is not an event. So, it is not that I have encountered the Makara once and then I have this somehow received this you know, downloaded this information, which I can just go into an access every time it is nothing like that at all. The encounter with the Makara happens again and again and again, because it is a ritual invocation which points to the fact that this life is transient, ever changing, never steal, and therefore this encounter must be reignited again and again. And each time it's going to be a different marker, not the same combination, because there are many different Makaras, there are many different Dhumavathis, each time it will be a different experience. And each time there will be a different fear and terror and unease and a different suffering of loneliness, but also a different taste to the devotion to that creative expression. And that is where there is the element of enjoyment is that ever renewing expressive potential of these encounters.

So I hope that this gives you some reflections on aloneness, and how it can coexist with all of the, the good and valuable offerings of being in company, thriving in company, participating in company belonging in company but it is underpinned with firstly, belonging to ourselves and our own authenticity.