TRANSCRIPT
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You know, there's a very ancient idea that runs through almost every spiritual tradition and that is the idea of the chosen one, the elect. The person who has been singled out by fate or by the divine for a particular destiny. And one of the most consistent characteristics of such individuals throughout history is their profound aloneeness. Not loneliness, mind you, that's something quite different, but aloneeness, solitude, [music] a kind of a partners from the ordinary stream of human life.
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Now, I want to explore why this is so because it touches on something very deep about the nature of spiritual awakening and the path of consciousness. And I want to be very clear from the start. When I speak of a chosen man, I'm not talking about someone who is better than others or more deserving or specially favored by some cosmic authority. That would be a completely egoistic interpretation. What I'm talking about is someone who has been chosen by life itself, by existence, by the universe, or however you want to put
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it, to wake up, to see through the game, to understand what most people never understand. [music] And the question is why must such a person walk alone? Why can't they have the companionship, the sense of belonging, the comfort of being part of the crowd that most people enjoy? What is it about spiritual realization that necessitates [music] this solitary journey? Let me begin by saying that the spiritually chosen individual has a different relationship with reality than most people do. Most
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people experience life through a thick filter of concepts, beliefs, conditioning, [music] and psychological needs. They see the world not as it is, but as their minds tell them it is. They live in a kind of trance, a consensus hallucination that we call normal consciousness. The chosen one, on the other hand, has somehow broken through this trance. Perhaps through suffering, perhaps through grace, perhaps through years of spiritual practice. It doesn't matter how. What matters is that they now perceive reality more directly with
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[music] less mediation from the conceptual mind. And this creates an unbridgegable gap between them and those who are still living in the trance. Imagine trying to describe color to someone who has been blind from birth. You can use all the words you want, red, blue, green, but they will never truly understand what you're talking about because they lack the direct experience. In the same way, the spiritually awakened person has experiences, perceptions, understandings that simply cannot be communicated to those who
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haven't had them. And so they walk alone, not because they want to be superior or separate, but because there's literally no one who can fully understand [music] what they're experiencing. Now, this aloneeness begins even before full awakening. The moment someone starts to question the fundamental assumptions of their culture, their religion, their society, that moment they step out of the crowd. They become dangerous because they're no longer predictable, no longer controllable through the usual means.
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The crowd senses this and begins to distance itself from them or tries to pull them back into conformity. [music] I remember speaking with a young man once who had been raised in a very strict religious tradition. He began to have doubts, to ask questions that his community considered heretical. And he said to me, "Allan, I feel like I'm dying. Everyone I've known my whole life is pulling away from me. My family looks at me like I'm a stranger. My friends don't know what to [music] say to me
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anymore." And I told him, "Yes, you are dying. The person you were is dying, and that death is necessary for what you're becoming. But I won't lie to you. It's a lonely death because you must die alone. This is the first reason why the spiritually chosen walk alone. They're undergoing a transformation that others cannot follow them through. It's like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar [music] into a butterfly. The caterpillar must go into the chrysalis alone. No other caterpillar can
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accompany it. And during that time of transformation, it's neither caterpillar nor butterfly. It's in between in a kind of liinal space that is profoundly isolating. But there's a deeper reason still. The spiritually chosen individual [music] has discovered something that most people spend their entire lives avoiding. That the separate self, [music] the ego, is an illusion. Now this is not just an intellectual understanding. It's a direct perception, a lived reality. They have seen through
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the fiction of being a separate entity isolated inside a bag of skin cut off from the rest of existence. And once you've seen this, once you've realized that what you are is not this little ego, but the vast consciousness in which everything appears, [music] you can't relate to people in the same way anymore. Most human relationships are based on two egos. Interacting, negotiating, competing, cooperating. But if you no longer identify primarily as an ego, if you've seen through that
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whole game, then conventional relationship becomes very difficult. This doesn't mean the awakened [music] person becomes cold or indifferent. Quite the opposite, they often become more loving, more compassionate, more present. But the basis of their relating is different. They're not relating ego to ego. They're relating from that deeper dimension, from consciousness itself, [music] from what some traditions call the self with a capital S. And most people don't know how to meet someone at that level. They are so
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identified with their personality, their story, their psychological needs and fears that they can only relate to others who are playing the same game. When they encounter someone who isn't playing, who has stepped out of the game while still appearing to be in it, they become [music] confused, uncomfortable, sometimes hostile. The chosen one must walk alone because they're operating from a different dimension of being than most people. It's as if everyone else is living on a flat plane and they've
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discovered that there's a vertical dimension, a depth that most people are completely unaware of. They can still move on the horizontal plane with others. They can have conversations, do their work, participate in society, but their center of gravity is elsewhere in that vertical dimension that others cannot see. There's also the matter of values and priorities. The spiritually awakened person has seen through the goals that most people are pursuing. Wealth, status, security, pleasure, achievement, these things that drive
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most human behavior are recognized as empty, [music] as incapable of providing the fulfillment that people seek from them. Not that the awakened person necessarily rejects these things or lives in poverty and isolation, but they're not fooled by them. They're not hypnotized by the carrot that society dangles in front of everyone. And when you're not chasing what everyone else is chasing, when you're not competing in the same race, [music] when you're not measuring yourself by the same
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standards, you naturally find yourself alone. Because the whole structure of society, [music] the whole mechanism of social interaction is built around these shared pursuits, [music] these common goals. When you step out of that framework, you step out of the social world in a very fundamental way. I've observed this in my own life. I've known many people over the years, had many acquaintances, participated in many social circles. But there's always been a quality of aloneeness, of not quite
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fitting in, of being present. but somehow apart. Not because I'm trying to be special or different, but because I simply can't take seriously the things that others take seriously. The dramas that consume most people's attention, who's up and who's down, who said what about whom, which politician or celebrity is doing, what these things strike me as fundamentally unimportant, like children arguing over toys. Now, this might sound arrogant, as if I'm claiming to be above such concerns, but
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it's not arrogance. It's simply a different perspective, a different level of seeing. It's like an adult watching children play. The adult doesn't think they're better than the children, but they can't quite enter into the drama of the game with the same intensity because they've outgrown it. They see it for what it is, a game, a temporary amusement, not the ultimate reality that the children take it to be. The spiritually chosen person has outgrown the collective game that [music]
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humanity plays. the game of separation, competition, accumulation, and achievement. And so they walk alone, not in bitterness or superiority, but simply because they're no longer playing. But here's something very important to understand. This aloneeness is not isolation. The awakened person often feels more connected to existence, to nature, to the cosmos, to other beings at a deep level than they ever did when they were part of the crowd. The paradox is that in losing their sense of being a
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separate self, they discover that they're connected to everything. In walking alone, they find that they are never truly alone because they are the whole. There's a beautiful Zen saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. The external activities remain the same, but the internal experience is completely different. The awakened person still lives in the world, still interacts with others, still does what needs to be done. But
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they do it from a place of profound aloneeness, which is simultaneously a place of complete [music] unity. This is very difficult for most people to understand. They think of aloneeness as loneliness, as isolation, as being cut off. But spiritual aloneeness is something entirely different. It's a fullness, not an emptiness. It's the discovery that you are sufficient unto yourself because you are not really yourself. You are existence itself expressing through this particular form. The chosen one walks alone because they
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have discovered that they were never really separate to begin with. The sense of needing others, of requiring companionship to be complete, arises from the illusion of being a separate entity. When that illusion dissolves, when you realize your fundamental unity with all that is, the desperate need for relationship dissolves, too. Not that relationships disappear or become unimportant, but they're no longer driven by that anxious neediness, that fear of being alone that drives so much human [music] behavior. And this changes
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the quality of relationship entirely. When you're complete in yourself, when your center is within you rather than in others approval or companionship, you can meet others without agenda, without need, without the unconscious manipulation that characterizes most human interaction. [music] You can love without attachment, engage without dependency, participate without losing yourself. But again, this is rare. Most people are incomplete in themselves, desperately seeking completion through others, through
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achievements, through acquisitions. And when they encounter someone who is complete, who isn't seeking anything, who isn't playing the game of neediness and fulfillment, they don't know what to do with them. Such a person is useless to the ego's project. And so the ego dismisses them, avoids them, or tries to normalize them to pull them back into the game. The spiritually chosen person accepts this. They understand that they will walk alone, that they cannot force others to understand what they've
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realized, that they cannot drag anyone into the kingdom who isn't ready to enter. And so they walk their path, alone but not lonely, solitary but not isolated, apart but profoundly connected to all that is. There's also [music] the matter of destiny, of calling. The chosen one has a work to do, a message to deliver, a function to fulfill that others cannot fulfill for them. This work often requires solitude, requires stepping away from the conventional world, requires a kind of dedication
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that doesn't allow for the normal [music] comforts of social belonging. Think of the prophets in the wilderness, the monks in their caves, the philosophers in their solitary contemplations. These weren't people who chose isolation because they hated humanity. They chose it because they had something to discover, something to understand, [music] something to bring back to humanity. And that discovery required aloneeness, required silence, required stepping away from the noise and uh distraction of
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ordinary social life. The chosen one is often working on something, not necessarily a book or a teaching or a public work, but an internal work, a transformation, an understanding that requires all their attention, all their energy. And this work is incompatible with the demands of normal social life with its expectations, its distractions, its constant call to return to the consensus reality. So they walk alone following an inner compass that others cannot see, drawn by a call that others cannot hear, serving a purpose that
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others cannot understand. And they do this not because they want to be special or different, but because they have no choice. The call is too strong, the vision too clear, the work too important. And yet paradoxically, this solitary work is for the benefit of all. The chosen one who walks alone is not abandoning humanity. They're serving it in the deepest way possible. By waking up, by seeing clearly, by breaking through the collective trance, they create a possibility for others. They demonstrate that another way of being is
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possible. They hold a space of consciousness that others can sense, can be drawn to, can perhaps eventually enter themselves. But they cannot do this work in the crowd. [music] They cannot maintain that clarity, that depth, that connection to the source while engaged in the endless trivia of social life. They must walk alone, must maintain their solitude, must guard their inner silence like a precious treasure. Because that silence, that solitude, that aloneeness, this is where the truth lives, where the real work
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happens, where consciousness deepens and clarifies. Now, I want to address something very important. Some people hear teachings like this [music] and they use them to justify their social inadequacy, their inability to relate to others, their fear of intimacy. They say, "Oh, I'm spiritually advanced. That's why I'm alone. [music] That's why no one understands me." But this is just spiritual ego, [music] just another game the mind plays to avoid facing its own issues. True spiritual aloneeness is not
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bitter. It's not resentful. It's not accompanied by a sense of superiority or by complaints about how stupid or unconscious everyone else is. True spiritual aloneeness is peaceful, accepting, [music] even joyful. The genuinely awakened person doesn't feel sorry for themselves. [music] They don't wish things were different. They've accepted their path, embraced their solitude, made friends with their aloneeness. So, you must be very honest with yourself. Are you alone because
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you've outgrown the crowd or because you're afraid of the crowd? Are you solitary because you're doing deep spiritual work or because you're avoiding the challenges of relationship? Are you walking alone because you're following a genuine calling or because you've given up on life? These are crucial questions [music] and only you can answer them honestly. The test is in your being. If you're genuinely on the path, if you're truly chosen in the sense I'm describing, there will be a
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quality of presence, of peace, of clarity about you. Others may not understand you, but they'll sense something real. Your aloneeness will not diminish you. It will deepen [music] you, strengthen you, make you more fully yourself. The spiritually chosen man walks alone because he must. Because the path he's on is solitary by nature. Because the truth he's discovered cannot be shared in ordinary language. Because the work he's doing requires a depth of silence and solitude that social life
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makes impossible. Because he's operating from a dimension that most people are unaware of. Because he's following a call that others cannot hear. But in this aloneeness, he discovers something extraordinary. He discovers that he is not separate from anything. that his aloneeness is an illusion from one perspective [music] and yet absolutely necessary from another. That he walks alone and yet is accompanied by all of existence. That he is solitary and yet never lonely, apart and yet profoundly
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connected, chosen and yet no different from anyone else who has the courage to wake up and see. This is the paradox, the mystery, the beautiful contradiction at the heart of spiritual life. You must walk alone to discover that you were never separate. You must leave the crowd to find that you are the crowd, that you are everyone and everything, that there is no other. You must become profoundly solitary to realize the deepest intimacy with all that is. And so the chosen one walks alone but whole, solitary but
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complete, apart but united with all, following the pathless path that only he can walk. Serving the truth that only he can serve in his particular [music] way. Being the light that only he can be. Not because he's special, but because everyone is special. Not because he's chosen above others, but because everyone is chosen who chooses to wake up. Not because his path is better, but because it's his path. The one that existence has laid out for him. The one he must walk alone.
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