Unquestionably, the hardest thing for anyone to hear, but the realest thing for us to know is:

We are all alone.

Now, before you go looking around the room that you’re currently reading this in, or think about all the people in your life, understand that I don’t meant this from the physical plane of existence (necessarily), I mean this more so from a metaphysical one. 

Any life experience that you may have; any thought; any emotion; any realization; anything and everything—is all happening within you. ‘You’ are the totality of your own life experiences and the gatekeeper for how you perceive the outside world moving all around you.

Think about having to do something that you truly fear. Think about something that you have to go through; like going to the dentist, the doctors, or giving a presentation to your entire class. There is just you and you. Sure, physically, there may be tens of thousands of people surrounding you; but, internally, you are the only person there to experience any of it. And that scares us to our core.

It is the same reason, I suspect, that we, as a species, long so deeply for companionship and entertainment—all in a vain effort to distract ourselves from the gnawing reality of: there is only you and you.

Sure, you may be comforted; you may be told that it’s all going to be OK; but, at the end of the day, no one but you will know what an exact experience feels like. At the end of the day, no one but you will stare yourself in the bathroom mirror as you brush your teeth at night. No one, but you, will be left feeling completely lost in a sea of people who seem to have it all together—appearing to know where it is that they are going (or, so you’d think!).

This is precisely why meditation is so important. In coming to sit quietly with no one but yourself, you are presented with the omnipresent opportunity to be what I have been talking about this entire time—alone.

It is an opportunity that we can take at any moment to become “one” with ourselves and learn to love, change, or adapt the person that we have become. The manifested you is the image on the canvas, your thoughts are the paint brush and the consciousness residing beneath it all (just observing) is the artist.

Who have you become? Who will you become? Who do you want to become?

I also suspect that this is the reason why there are so many people out there who are adverse to the idea of sitting quietly, alone, with their own thoughts, feelings and emotions; because they are uncomfortable with the person that they have become. Think about it, if you had spent your entire life never analyzing the impact of your every decision from a personal perspective, you may not wish to stare truth in the face and realize: I don’t like who I am. However, sometimes the only way out is through, and we must accept whatever it is that arises.

Meditation, or sitting quietly with oneself, is a knife that cuts straight to the point by asking one simple question: ‘who am I?’, which in turn leads to one invariable truth: ‘I have made my bed and now I must lie in it or get up and change it.’

However, please don’t take what I have said too morosely, and just appreciate the fact that: until we have stared deep into the heart of the dark abyss and *don’t blink* can we ever really objectively work with the tools that we have taken for granted or overlooked for so long. We can change. We can love ourselves. We can adapt.

Ultimately, the tools for change only arise from the understanding of who and what we are, and what we may (or may not) be capable of.

So, take some time to look deep into the heart of the dark abyss and *don’t blink*.

-it’s not so bad.