Kay Alisia

Loneliness is absence of the other. Aloneness is the presence of oneself. Aloneness is very positive. it is a presence, overflowing presence. You are so full of presence that you can fill the whole universe with your presence and there is no need for anybody.

If Jesus had yelled from the cross, “I hate all you guys,” it would have been a completely different story. There would have been no resurrection. What created the space for his triumph was his defenselessness, his holding to love despite what others were doing to him. The body can be destroyed, but truth cannot be. Truth will always reassert itself, given a symbolic three days. Three days represents the time it takes between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between an open-hearted response to hurt and the experience of rebirth that will always follow.

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.

But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.

Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.