Joel Rachelson, Ph.D.
Founder, Conscious Singles

Unfortunately, being single today is not easy. Understatement, I guess in light of the many single ads, books, services and yes even websites which attempt to address this life status.*

Why is this?

There are two fundamental problems here.

First, for a number of reasons, it is difficult to be at peace internally with being single. It is a basic human need to be connected and partnered. Because being partnered is a basic need there is pain when we are alone. Not always felt but always lurking. Further, to not be in a primary relationship is semi-stigmatized and felt on some level as a failure.

Second, it is difficult to meet other singles, in most any environment much less a healthy environment or process. And this search for other singles is made much more difficult when trying to find others who are conscious and like minded as well.

“Conscious?” You say, “What does that mean exactly?” In dictionary terms it means “perceiving or noticing with a degree of controlled thought.” In regular words, it means to have the capacity for a divided awareness or self observation. This means that one can step back in their awareness of themselves: in their awareness of themselves with others; in their awareness of themselves in relationships; in their awareness of themselves to tasks, objects, the world, etc. Being co-conscious means that one has the capacity to observe internal processes and external behaviors and then make adjustments. I call this the capacity to become self fluent and self competent.

Certainly, being conscious is one of the hallmarks of our humanness and is in fact becoming a growth industry, both in the amount of it (thank the creator!) and in the kinds of things that are by-products of it. Also, being co-conscious means being aware of the different levels of consciousness. And once this awareness of different levels happens, there is usually a desire to cultivate the higher and deeper, more spiritual levels. This awareness of the essence that underlies the form of reality or existence, as someone on the Discussion Boards wrote, is a very healthy positive pursuit.

Those that are conscious and who are cultivating deeper, more spiritual levels of consciousness are wonderful, kind, loving and committed. For someone who is conscious it is actually something akin to a compulsion to be present, to pursue higher and more spacious states inside of us or outside. This yields more joy in the experience of life and the capacity to view from a broader, more awe-based perspective. This is what makes grace possible. Also, those who are conscious seem to share interests in healthy, holistic living, personal growth, spirituality, metaphysics, recovery, social issues and the environment. (They are indeed members of this website.)

The ironic thing here is that this higher level reality that is cultivated and experienced is the level of consciousness that connects us, yet there is a still a difficulty in connecting to someone from our singular existence. Even though this singular or separated existence maybe an illusion, it real enough or even more pointed when going to bed at night alone as a single person.
Hence, the purpose of the articles of this website is to illuminate, validate and assist those that are conscious and single.

Being conscious and single means that one can be aware and fluent and become more skillful with this ironic thing--that being single for those who are aware that we are all connected is difficult and sometimes painful. The suggestion here is that the thing to do with the awareness of the pain of being nonpartnered is to make friends and work with it. The purpose of becoming friends and working with our desire/longing to be connected and the accompanying discomfort is to find and maintain the right stance or right Zen in regards to being single.

Again, the challenge of being single is how to find the right stance, the right Zen, toward this lack that causes the ache. We can then better tolerate this unmet longing and discomfort and not feel compelled to unhealthily fill the hole or numb it out of our experience. This article and most all the articles on the site are about how to find the right singles Zen.

After befriending and accepting this unwanted state, finding the right stance then requires working on it. Masterful and comprehensive self work has both inner and outer aspects. What I would like to do here is use the categories that I am experimenting with in sorting the article section of this website as way to catalog the inner work aspects for finding good singles Zen: Eastern, Western, New Thought and Psychological.

The Internal Approaches

So, following the framework of the Conscious Articles section one can use an Eastern approach, a Western, a New Thought, or a psychological approach to doing inner work. The Eastern approach uses meditation/mindfulness to observe and detach. This approach is embodied in the message: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
The Western approach suggests surrender to a higher power and uses prayer and a trust in God. Their approach is embodied in the message: let go and let god.

The New Thought approach suggests one pivot away from the bad feelings and thoughts and focus on the feeling of having what is wanted. Their approach is embodied in the message: what you focus on you attract.**

The idea is to use these approaches to work with negative feelings to feel better and or to feel better when having negative feelings. This is, after all, the point of working through your stuff. The more stuff you work through the less stuff you have and more room for grace.

The psychological approach involves working through family of origin/historical wounds and issues that cause or contribute the negative beliefs and feelings we have about being single. Sometimes this working through means going into the pain of a early wound that is getting triggered and expressing it and sometimes this means learning how to self parent so that we are not needy or unconsciously projecting an unhappy outcome. Sometimes working through means looking at and redoing the underlying historical issues/programming. Usually it means working with someone therapeutically because our personal history may interfere with our capacity for awareness or our capacity to healthily respond to our feelings and needs.

In regards to being single, our imbedded programming can be affecting how we feel about being a single person, how we search, who we search for, what our expectations are, and even how successful we are. What negative feelings do you have about being single right now and what feelings do you have about meeting your beloved? If the negative feeling is something other than mad, sad, scared, happy and it is has a repetitively nonpositive outcome feel, then it is related to a negative piece of programming. And the specifics of the programming language is in the self talk associated with these feelings. The goal here is to recognize this as negative script, loacalize it and therapize it. We can do some of this together on the boards and help each other.****

The goal of a psychological approach, with oneself or with a professional, is to learn how to be your own therapist and internal parent/grownup. The aim here is to learn how to self sooth or self parent in regards to bad feelings and unmet needs. To become, using psychological based methods, self fluent and more self competent.
In terms of being a conscious single, it is imperative that we have a healthy relationship with ourselves before we can have healthy interpersonal relationships.

If someone is too needy for a relationship they can subtlety and not so subtlety push or scare people away. The neediness to be in a relationship is due to requisite that one is not ok if one isn’t in a relationship or in order to get basic emotional needs met only in a relationship. This neediness issue is one of the reasons why people do the "urge to merge need to flee" dance. So it is important to learn how to get to an Ok place about being single. (This is made a little harder because of all the cultural pressures and stigmas.) It is important to learn how to meet most of your own basic needs so that relationships are the icing not the cake.***

The External Approach.

The outer or external aspects of working with this unwanted state is to do something. In terms of doing something, the right Zen is not to be too attached and clutching or too detached. Being too attached usually and anxious is caused by being too needy and intolerant of negative feelings associated with being single as described in the previous paragraph. Being too detached and inactive is also a problem and could be from either a defense against being hurt and disappointed or a hopeless/cynical resignation. The goal of good Zen is not to be too forward or too rearward psychically or literally.

The external focus is the development of successful behavior strategies for meeting others and how to healthily go about dating. This can range from how you put yourself in a position to meet others, to evaluating your expectations, or to maintaining the basket theory of dating (as in don’t put your eggs in just one). Having playfriends that may or may not become more than friends is an important way to keep the Zen in this search.

Finding someone is not easy but you don’t have to feel bad about it and you don’t have to be out of your Zen in what you do. In some ways it needs to be approached as the attempt to reach a very important goal. Perhaps the most important goal in your life's enrichment. So approach it as a mission, possibly a long-term venture. Patience, proactivity, positivity and persistence pays.

And Conscious Singles just happens to give lots of opportunities to do something. Whether it is editing your profile, doing a search, adding to the discussions, praying for yourself with us, getting and giving affirmations…..and oh yeah, upgrading your membership and sending someone a message. You can do it here.

the end for now...

*In a law of attraction sense, maintaining that something being hard is not good. However being single is difficult is reality from my personal and professional perspective. The goal in a law of attraction sense is how to hold this reality. Abraham-Hicks has many suggestions about the law of attraction, one of the simplest being not to focus on what is but on what one wants and to feel the feeling of it happening. And this is indeed what the purpose of this article is about.
**For a much more fleshed out description of these approaches, please see the Conscious Article section. AND, I would be really please if someone want to add to the section in terms of how these approaches specifically address being single.

***I was less brief on the psychological approach because it is my cup of tea, so to speak.
*****Help is usually required for recognition of the negative scripting because many times this stuff is out of our awareness and even not so verbal. Ask me about Psychic Astronomy.

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