John 16:32 Meaning Behold

Each mind retreats to its own when fear rises, scattering back into the private darkness where it believes it stands by itself. This is the ego's hour, when it insists everyone is alone in a body, cut off, abandoned to a separate corner.

Yet the mind that abides in Love is untouched by this seeming departure. It is not alone, because its Source is with it, and that Source is what it is. Aloneness is only the belief in separation taken for a fact, and a mind that keeps its Source cannot be deserted, however many turn away.

There comes an hour, and it is always now, when everyone scatters and you find yourself utterly alone. Every person you leaned on returns to their own concerns, and the support you thought was holding you falls away. To the ego this feels like abandonment, and it panics.

Yet there is an aloneness that is not lonely at all. When the outer props are gone, you discover a presence that was there the whole time, quieter than any relationship, closer than any companion. The source of your own being has not left. That is why you can stand in complete solitude and still feel held: you were never truly separate from the life that is living you.

Loneliness and aloneness look alike from outside and are opposite within. Loneliness is the ego missing the crowd that confirmed it. Aloneness is what stands when the crowd has gone and nothing at all is missing.

Everyone scattering to his own place is the hour when borrowed support withdraws, and it comes to whoever goes deep enough. The one who can say he is not alone in that hour has stopped locating himself in company. What he calls the Father is his own awareness, undivided, never dependent on a single face around him, and it could only be tasted once the faces left.