Alex Grey Despair Loneliness.jpg

The Lonely Life of a Knower

by Moe, Gnostic Warrior

“If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.” — Carl Jung

My life has always been filled with the feeling of being alone. These feelings I can recall all throughout my childhood, teen years and as an adult. They followed me like faceless monsters in a bad dream that would last from the wee hours of the morning and well into the dark night of the soul.

Sometimes I would feel the utter despair of abandonment as if I was a child with no parents or family even though I had both. A lost adopted child who even my own biological parents could not relate.

It often didn’t matter who I would surround myself with, and who I befriended for much needed companionship. This loneliness had seemed to haunt me no matter what I did, or where I went. Surrounding myself with people, my life was even lonelier than when I’m by myself.

Today at this point in my 44th year of my sojourn journey, this fact seems more evident than ever.

In this interconnected world of fast media, fast friends, and attention deficit disorderly people, I sometimes feel more disconnected than ever.

I’m simply an outcast caught in a web on the super information highway of ignorance where almost everything and everyone is a copy of a copy that many of us now call our lives.

I’m sure many of you who are reading my words of abandonment can somewhat relate to this life sentence of solitary confinement. A life that was simply not of our own free will choosing, but a deck of cards dealt to us by fate by the dealer of death.

It was as if we were sentenced to Life in order to spend our lives in some cold and dark prison cell with open doors that we are often too scared to venture out of.

You see, this lonely path you and I walk is not one of choice, but of Truth. The way of the knower who knows to much in a crowd of ignorance.

Carl Jung had walked the lonely road of Gnosis for most of his life. He was a knower, and because he was a great soul who knew too much, he was often shunned by his peers, and attacked by his ignorant critics. I think many of us can relate with Jung who had written in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections:

“Knowledge of processes in the background early shaped my relationship to the world. Basically, that relationship was the same in my childhood as it is to this day.

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. The loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams, and reached its climax at the time I was working on the unconscious.

I”f a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.

“But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.” – Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 356.

As I grow older, I have come to accept my lonely fate. But I also realize that I’m not so alone because they are millions of people around the world just like Jung and like me in my all knowing unified tribe of souls who are true to their higher selves. We come in all sorts of beautiful shapes, colors and modes of alchemical thought.

I have also come to conclusion that my feelings of loneliness are sometimes self fabricated chains on my soul that I must break in order to move my spirit forward.

While this world and people in it can sometimes be ugly and unforgiving, there is much beauty to be found still today in the vast wildnerness of souls whose truths, loves and Great Work are a connection that we all share.

It doesn’t matter your faith, religion or man made word you use to describe your life by, we are all unified by truth, light and love. For like attracts like….

We must all leave this prison cell of the soul of the As Within in order to experience the beauty in all things that can be found on the As Without. This break from jail is part of the Great Work of all my fellow outcast Brothers and Sisters who suffer from the same isolated feelings of the soul.

You see, I have found that the life of a knower does not have to be one filled with utter despair, loneliness and defeat.

This path of the lonely ones can be changed into one of hope, unity, and success. All we have to do is open our eyes and souls to those great people who are like us and wish to connect with one another.

Let us renounce our old attachments to negativity, and grow to new ideals of faith, oneness and hope in all of humanity.

As the greatest of Masonic Philosophers, Manly P. Hall had written:

“But the wise man himself does not feel lonely. Wisdom brings him nearer to life; closer to the heart of the world than the foolish man can ever be.

“The wise man gazing off into space sees not an emptiness, but a space full of life, truth, and law.”

Artwork by Alex Gray