We leave our homeland, our property and our friends. We give up the familiar ground that supports our ego, admit the helplessness of ego to control its world and secure itself. We give up our clingings to superiority and self-preservation… It means giving up searching for a home, becoming a refugee, a lonely person who must depend on himself… Fundamentally, no one can help us. If we seek to relieve our loneliness, we will be distracted from the path. Instead, we must make a relationship with loneliness until it becomes aloneness.

– Chögyam Trungpa

Image above: Geraki, CC-BY-SA-4.0

aloneness control Ego ground helplessness loneliness Refugee security self-dependence self-preservation superiority