YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.

Our media-centric times, in which other humans are either speaking directly to us or reacting to what we text on our screens, create the illusion of interconnectedness. It is a comforting illusion while it lasts. But who are you when all your screens are turned off, and you are alone?

The answer is simple: You are truly you. 

The you who awakes to darkness in the night is the true you, especially if your bedmate is a sound sleeper. Somehow being alone in the dark with another unconscious being near you accentuates your singularity in the world. Those who sleep alone are more accustomed to being alone with their true selves when waking to the vulnerability which the dark of night enhances.

Next time this happens, take some time to acquaint yourself with that you before you turn on a screen or speaker. 

I have been comatose twice in my life. I mean in an actual coma which lasted some time. When I emerged from those states, for a few seconds, I experienced The Universe as a solitary living creature with consciousness. Beyond that description, I am hard-pressed to describe what that felt like. 

Those experiences have shaped my life at a very fundamental level. The most important influence they have had on me is my deep understanding that letting go of everything is an ultimate inevitability. That everything includes my existence as a human creature and all the parts of me that constitute it. 

So what? I can hear the jaded and heavily encapsulated responses from those who have no idea of what it means to have those experiences. Social media mobs and obsession with Zeitgeist are walls of a fortress, constructed by today's youth to fend off the kind of introspection which comes from personal suffering and exhaustion from manual labor. 

Those fortresses are only as good as the electric service and constant upgrading which keep them in place. Your devices are not really part of you. And, no matter how many friends you may think you have, none of them are part of you either. Yes, ultimately, you are born alone and you will die alone. 

This has never changed. It is one of the quintessential aspects of all conscious life. 

So, why bother thinking about it? Why not live, live, live without thinking about it? No reason. The vast number of humans who have lived haven't thought about it. And what has that done for our species and our planet? 

Culturing the awareness of life's ultimate solitude, I believe, is the first step to higher consciousness. And I say this as someone who has been intellectually studying existence and various takes on it for over fifty years. My discovery that I could not read my way to higher consciousness was somewhat startling. 

I began studying world religions when I was a college freshman at 16. Four years of Theology and Philosophy classes, alongside four years as a Cellular Biology major, led to my more intensive exploration of Eastern Thought. After university a had a brief encounter with parapsychological phenomena. By my mid-thirties, I was a formally practicing Buddhist, chanting and meditating twice daily. 

Even after six years of working as a hospice nurse with dying patients, I was still naive about the real solitude of the human experience. Then I myself nearly died of AIDS. My first induced coma came when I was so severely sick with pneumonia that I had to be intubated in the hospital. Awaking from that first comatose experience was a rebirth. 

My second comatose experience came after I had months of radiation treatments for cancer. I developed septicemia, which attacked my heart. My body temperature went to 106'F. I managed to drive myself 40 miles to the hospital. Once I was placed in a bed, I lost consciousness for two days. Think of that. My animal determination to survive sustained my consciousness through febrile delirium long enough to get me to a place where I could safely leave my body in the hands of others. 

Awaking from that second comatose state was a disappointment. I will not lie. I woke to a persistent fever of 104-105'F which sent my whole body into muscle spasms...wakeful seizures, called rigors. But throughout it, I was conscious of a core understanding that it did not matter. As I lapsed into sleep from medications to ease the convulsive episodes, I was calm and unafraid.

You see, the moment we take our first breaths in life, all that we are is gained and is already lost. We enter this life with nothing on a very basic level. And so we leave it. All we truly have in the interim is our consciousness of being alive. That consciousness can be a humorous one, a civilized one, a demented one, a predatory one, a violent one. But it is our own singular possession, which we may have as long as our bodies function well enough for our brains to appreciate it. 

I am not being cynical. I am speaking simple biological fact. Integrating that simple biological fact into a growing or deteriorating consciousness is the trick of which I write. 

I envy lucky dogs. A lucky dog who finds a loving home with another dog or a child companion is truly a happy being. That dog never has a thought of being alone...or of not being. It plays and frollicks. It naturally obsesses on kibble or table scraps. It is swept into ecstasy lying alongside another warm creature or being petted by its host. In the throes of aging and dying, it simply sleeps away between occasional questioning looks at its companions. "What's happening?" is written in its expression. And the loved dog has carers who will eventually spare it the tortures of a prolonged dying of cancer or some other affliction. 

We humans may well be the apex of the conscious-mammal pyramid, but that comes with a price. If you accept the notion, as I do, that there is no personality-based afterlife, the thought of surrendering existence inevitably induces fear. That fear is mitigated for those of us who have experienced the total loss of our consciousness. We know it is a natural release, not an unnatural extinction. We also know that ultimately it is ours to face alone.

Living with this height of awareness is not for delirious young lovers or driven politicians. It is not for the collectors or the glamorous. It is not for anyone whose experience of life is bathed in luxury or the good luck of never wanting for anything. To some degree, it is not a choice. It has to befall you. This awareness may come to you as it has to me, through disease. For the fortunate, it may come from some less traumatic coincidence. If it should come to you, embrace it. Don't push it away out of fear.