We speak of the three great fears, loneliness, abandonment and being different. The first and greatest of these was loneliness. These three come from our separation from the divine, which creates within our souls an emptiness, we try at any cost to fill. Our greatest enemy here is our mind that ratifies that first fear over and over again.

John Bowlby suggested that every human desires to be attached, many went on to suggest that this was an inherent need in humans; that this attachment gave confidence of safe haven and expression.

The second part to this was that every human fears loneliness and this loneliness derives from those we attach to, detaching. These two statements were gathered as one concept, “…. Humans desire attachment but the reward of attachment is pain & abandonment, so humans fear attachment and yet long for it or have it and continuously test or break it.”

At an emotion level we are caught in this vicious circle from childhood, all the while the repeating being corroborated with the loss of pets, toys, school friends, older relatives, which gets played out in relationships with parents and eventually played into personal relationships. Seems everything we do is out of fear or testing!

All around us everyone else is doing the same thing and we paralyze ourselves into a depression of our true wants. True everyone around appears to breathing, but in truth no one will breathe for the other.

At the soul level, the great song of the Ancestors condenses into a wild wind that falls to breathe each one of us. It may seem as many breaths, in reality one wind, one song.

At birth there must be that moment when the soul gasps, true it chose to sing to this life, but in the glare and distraction of this dream world it forgets and feels a loneliness from that one song. It too struggles and gathers its breath to itself to afraid to test the oneness.

The great sadness is that he oneness of breath catches the wings of the soul and lifts it beyond its fear of loneliness, but soul and mind collude, the body hides and the soul never stretches its wings. We recall the song ‘Wind Beneath my wings’ a song written in 1982 by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley. It is a love song: “I can fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings”; a song of love where one knows they will be more because the other is breathing with and for them.

We may be excused for considering the Bowlby concept as self defeating, that is because we do not remember the song of the soul, in which every note, every lyric has purpose.

This loneliness note is the same note that gathers and calls us together, without that yearning call in our souls to be part of the song, we would not ever learn, to fly as one flock, with one purpose and one destination.

That is the sacrifice of the soul in its destiny of incarnation, to be the wind for others so it can fly. That sacrifice is to bear the pain of attachment, walk with the fear of abandonment, and to suffer the judgment of being different.

We can get caught in the vicious Bowlby circuit, or we can use the same spinning to reach maximum velocity and soar into the song beyond the spinning fear; the loneliness of the soul is a preparation for flight.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed
But I’ve got it all here in my heart
I want you to know I know the truth
I would be nothing without you
Did you ever know that you’re my hero?
And everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle
‘Cause you are the wind beneath my wings
You are the wind beneath my wings

Rev Seanair John-Luke Edwards