'How one thing can contain everything'

There is one theme that I see and hear a lot at the moment, in films, in books, in songs. It’s all about how we are all linked. And it made me think back to a particularly bad day in my life. I had been sitting in my room in London, on my bed. I had been crying for what seemed like an eternity. Nothing had happened in particular, I was just so sore with sadness, I couldn’t stop. I sat with my two mobiles in front of me, staring at them. And I thought to myself that I could pick up one of these phones and phone anyone, anyone, and they would listen to my incoherent babblings. But I couldn’t. At that moment, I had never felt more disconnected from the universe and even worse, from someone I trusted more than any other on this earth, me.

But it’s only when you really look at life or really listen to someone that you realise that this common theme echoing through all types of media stories, is in fact very true. And once you see that truth, it is a very powerful tool for healing. The power of visual and verbal conversation is awe-inspiring and can help you form an engendered insight into some unwelcome emotions.

“A meeting in the house of a Sao Paulo-born painter based in New York. We are talking about angels, and about alchemy. At one point, I try to explain to the other guests the alchemical idea that each of us contains the whole universe and that we are, therefore, responsible for it’s well-being. I struggle to find the right words, but cannot come up with a good image that will explain my point of view. The painter who had been listening in silence, asks everyone to look out of the window of his studio. ‘What can you see?’ he asks. ‘A street in Greenwhich Village,’ someone replies. The painter sticks a piece of paper over the window so that the street can no longer be seen; then, with a penknife, he cuts a small square in the paper. ‘And if someone were to look through there, what would he see?’ ‘The same street,’ comes a reply. The painter cuts several squares in the paper. ‘Just as each of these holes contains within it the whole view of the same street, so each of us contains in our soul the same universe,’ he says. And all of us applaud the lovely image he has found.”

Paulo Coehlo, ‘Like a Flowing River’

Sometime in everyone’s life, you lose sight of life. It darkens and your mind becomes a labyrinth of chaos and uncertainty. And you start feeling alone. You’re not. Just think about it. You are disconnected within yourself and your emotions react by making you feel you have lost connection with everyone around you. But just say you are connected to another person. So although, you feel disjointed internally and hence ‘distance’ yourself and feel ostracized from that other person, they don’t feel the same way. To them you are still connected, so aren’t you essentially? It’s just an illusion of a self-created perception of distance.

There is no such thing as loneliness, only a feeling of loneliness.