The Loneliness of Writing – Real or Phantom?

I have finally come to consider myself a seasoned writer. Not because I’ve written a beautifully-composed, expertly-plotted best seller, but because when I close the door to my office and begin putting words to paper, I enter a state of exquisite calm which allows me to tap into my creative side.

Writing is one of my gateways to present awareness—the state of true consciousness—where my ego falls away and the illusion of division from this universe I live in vanishes. As words and ideas come to me, the rest of the world is in limbo, and I am in a state of simply being while the words pour through me.

I work in an office in my home in Palm Springs. I recall sitting here alone one day, looking out the window at the street, and realizing that even though I spend several hours a day here, alone, I am never lonely.  It is not because I have conversations with my characters, as some writers do. It’s because when I’m here I enter a state where loneliness doesn’t exist.

I realized that day that loneliness is a phantom of the ego, the product of critical over-thinking. It why people say they can feel lonely in a crowded room. It’s a mental dialogue that creates that sense of emptiness, of longing for attention, rather than the actual situation. To my way of thinking, loneliness is a psychological illusion, fuelled by the ego’s need to be recognized, whereas being alone is a physical fact and nothing to get upset about.

Below are a few pictures of the place where I’m never lonely: