Being disconnected from love as close to hell as we’ll find on Earth

By David McElroy · January 25, 2020

I haven’t had the nightmare for years, but it used to terrorize the darkest of my nights.

It always started out in a familiar place, with people all around. I would try to speak to others, but they wouldn’t respond. It seemed as though they couldn’t even hear me. When I couldn’t get their attention, I would start frantically trying to get someone to notice.

I would try to touch the people around me, but my hands would go right through their bodies and then the image of the person would disappear. One after another, everyone around me would disappear — until I was left all alone.

And then the place where I was — home, school, office, whatever — would start getting hazy and dark. The physical world around me would slowly disappear. I could still see my body if I looked down at myself — as though something was illuminating me — but there was no physical substance of any kind for as far as I could see.

I was in a dark void. I was all alone. Worst of all, I would always feel as though there was no other presence that I would ever experience again. I knew I would be alone forever.

And then I would always wake up in panic, eager to make sure the world was still solid around me, but mostly eager to make sure there was someone in my life who would talk to me, would touch me, would listen to me.

I needed to reassure myself that I was not alone forever.

The late Rev. Billy Graham described hell as eternal separation from God. I have no interest in getting bogged down in the theology of hell, but Graham’s metaphor resonates more for me now than it did when I was young.

When I first heard that hell might be described as eternal separation from God, I thought that didn’t seem like that big a deal. After all, I lived here on Earth without God, so what would be the difference if things stayed that way?

I understand it quite a bit differently now, because I understand that the thing that makes us need one another so much is that Divine Spark of God which causes us to recognize one another and be drawn to one another. If it were not for the Divine in each one of us, I’m not sure we would need one another so much.

To lose contact with the Spirit inside other people is to lose touch with our Creator. To be alone and without love is the closest thing we will experience on this Earth to that hell-like separation from God which Graham postulated.

There are people all around me tonight, but I might as well be alone. In fact, I would feel less alone without these people in my sight. I feel no spark of Spirit from them. They feel like lifeless automatons moving through the world following pre-programmed scripts.

I feel as though I could put my hand right through them and there would be no substance there. I feel as though I could close my eyes and the physical substance around me would disappear — as an illusion might — and I would be alone in that void from my nightmares.

I want to reach out and touch Someone who is real. I want to find that Divine Spark in a person — and hold onto that person the way a frightened child might hold onto a candle in the dark.

I am in a world where almost everybody is sleepwalking. A few reach desperately for metaphors and explanations and hope. A few understand that the world we have been given is an illusion with little meaning. A few somehow gain the intuitive understanding that love and connection are all that ultimately matter — while all the rest chase things which will turn to dust as the illusion fades before their eyes.

I am alone tonight. I feel no love around me. I feel no presence.

I sense only the void. My spirit reaches out for love and connection, but there is no one there. I cannot awaken from this nightmare, because it is my reality for the moment.

I can’t step back into their world. I can’t live the way they do. And so my spirit lives alone in this void — desperate for connection, desperate for love, desperate for mutual understanding, desperate for that spark that ties spirits together in a way that no physical tie ever could.

This void — this disconnection from love and meaning — is what I know is real right now. And awareness of being alone in this void is the only hell that I will ever know.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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