Loneliness and Revelation: A Study of the Sacred
Everyone experiences loneliness in their lives. Yet most people are secretly afraid of it, and will do nearly anything to avoid it. Few are willing to talk about it at all. This book shows that loneliness is not simply a social phenomenon, nor a medical condition. Rather, it is an existential condition of life. So you can?t turn to other people, or true love, for a solution. Nor can you turn to God, for God is probably lonelier than you are! But loneliness is not evil. Indeed it can be a source of profound spiritual insight. Great religious heroes like Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammad made their most important spiritual revelations in solitude. This book offers a new understanding of the idea of Revelation, as a way of being in the world which gives spiritual significance to the arts, human relationships, love, and indeed to loneliness itself. It has four simple but far-reaching principles: I am here; this is what I am; and what I am is beautiful! Is anyone else out there?