I had the beautiful opportunity to coach someone new last night, and I realized (again) that helping people on a very deep level, holding their pain/fear long enough for them to just straighten up and remember who they are, is the only way out of loneliness. It is the biggest gift to me to be able to hold someone else's stuff for a second. I can see the thousand teachers who have said as much to me taking note that at last there it is...Tanya's dawning. Service is not an obligation, it is the balm. If you are going to sensitize yourself enough to actually be here, part of the deal is you're going to feel that ultimate loneliness. And the only way out is to give love and absorb/conduct garbage. Just weird to contrast with many situations where I would have said I was loving, but was definitely holding parts of the other person at bay. What would it be like to let that yuckiness, tension, whatever it is, flow through and out? As though I weren't even there. Just a hollow conduit. But some people have a lot of yuckiness. How do the gurus do it?