Hi Lonely Guy: My sense tells me that you’re simply more aware than most people. I’m privileged to have had thousands of intimate conversations with fellow seekers over the past 33 years, most would affirm that what you're experiencing is simply part of the curriculum en route to enlightenment.

It appears you have been resisting acknowledging that you’re a brilliant conscious person of integrity. In a world of overwhelming irresponsible hypocrisy (blatant misleading advertising, blaming lawsuits, remedial reading classes for college Freshmen) it’s almost impossible to not get sucked into the game. Many teens turn to drugs because they are surrounded by adults unconsciously committed to mediocrity, they have no one in their life who is conscious, who inspires them. Most "normal" seemingly happy people have bought into the norm of dating and marrying and settling for mediocre relationships. Few couples know how to recreate at will the experience of joy that comes through communication—an experience so different from talking and sex as to not be in the same ball park. Most would say that you're approaching intimacy as they wish they had, that they are only just now discovering the ecstasy of intercourse (all that takes place between two).

One pitfall of being conscious is that you can see what others can’t—the folly of the game, the ignorance, the inane policies, etc. Being aware can breed judgmental self-righteousness; it can turn some people off. Being right is as much an addiction as drugs. It could cause you think that there might be something wrong with you. It’s altogether possible that you’re one of the few sane people.

In short, there’s nothing wrong with you. Now is the time for a few thousand conversations with conscious people. There are millions out here, they’ve just been waiting for you to find them. They flit from errand to errand, under-the-wire, on purpose, self-assured, not needing anyone.

Your letter reveals that you don’t have a mutually supportive relationship with your parents else this would have been resolved in one sit-down with each. It would work for you to complete your relationship with them (or with a counselor who will converse with you as each parent would) else you will drag your poor-confused-me act into your personal relationship(s).

It could be said that your letter is one more step toward discovering your purpose in life. People without purpose have too much time on their hands and create undesirable problems to worry about. A person on purpose is too busy to worry about self/relationships. It could be said that your #10 is waiting for you to create a cause or to support theirs. There’s nothing as inspiring as a person with a purpose.

It might be of interest to know that communication skills coaches do not submit bids to education systems to present Advanced Communication Skills Workshops for Educators. Why? Because the interview process is so invalidating and abusive. During such interviews to hire coaches and workshop facilitators education administration staff use the same communication model taught to them by speech communication professors; this model is referred to the Adversarial Communication Model. This is the same model that produces teachers whose graduates must take remedial courses as college Freshman. My point being, the majority of people are not committed to living from integrity so one must be willing to go through (choose) loneliness rather than to resist it. A Zen monastery is guarded by two fierce gargoyles, the one named confusion the other paradox. To be enlightened one must go through both.

Having said all that, let’s address why you have been creating lonely. We have to be willing to look at your creation from the point of view that for some, as yet unknown but brilliant reason, the genius in you has been intending to be alone. What doesn’t work is to lie about it saying that you haven’t intended this problem. Mastery is intending what so to be so. Have loneliness be your idea. One exercise is to walk around acting as a pathetically lonely person, I mean really dramatize it, Hollywood-like, and see what happens; the exercise won’t work unless you truly get into the act. You become what you resist.

I suspect a part of what this curriculum is about for you is to complete your experience of self-righteousness. I know how difficult is to be among unconscious people, to be able to see what’s not working and not have the communication skills to effect a transformation. A friend of mine is said to have stopped talking for a year once he found out that all he could do was lie, that nothing he said really made a difference. BTW: It didn’t work because he was still judging but communicating his self-righteousness nonverbally thereby still producing less-than-ideal outcomes.

There’s so much more about this. If you’re interested post your thoughts in a reply.

Check back from time to time, I might edit or add thoughts. —Gabby