In an age of constant digital contact, why are we still aching with loneliness? Loneliness, anxiety, and depression feed each other in a feedback loop, revealing how emotional and spiritual disconnection can mirror and magnify psychological suffering. More than 1 in 5 adults report serious, chronic feelings of loneliness (Harvard, 2024). And while our minds reach for obvious explanations — social media, remote work, the breakdown of community — the root often runs deeper. Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist and author of The Spiritual Child , names what many of us intuitively feel: loneliness is not just a social issue — it’s a spiritual crisis. She reminds us: “When we feel lonely, we may have narrowed our perception of reality, forgetting we are innately connected — to one another and to a larger, spiritual consciousness” (Miller, 2023). In Jungian terms, this is a loss of archetypal grounding. Carl Jung wrote that our spiritual needs are as vital as food or safety (Jung, 1928). When these needs go unmet, we begin to feel unmoored — not just emotionally, but existentially. Loneliness is the soul’s alarm bell and a call to return to what is sacred and alive within us. From Dopamine to Oxytocin We are living in a dopamine-driven world, where likes, messages, and quick hits of digital feedback mimic connection but rarely nourish it. But true belonging happens through oxytocin — the hormone of trust, touch, and presence. One gives us the rush of being noticed. The other gives us the roots of being known. We are not starving for more information. We are starving for intimacy, for a spiritual resonance for the kind of connection that doesn’t flicker out when the screen goes dark. Our Disconnection from Nature, Spirit, and Soulful Community As we drift further from nature, spiritual rituals, indigenous wisdom, and collective healing, we lose the very threads that once held us together. We’ve traded sacred communities for curated content. And yet, something ancient is stirring. As Dr. Miller observes, we may be standing at the threshold of a spiritual renaissance, a reawakening of our longing to live in communion with the sacred (Miller, 2023). Many of us feel the pull to return to sacred circles, to breath and experience stillness, to forests and rivers, to each other. A kind of collective tapestry to bond and heal. Real Connection: A Grounded Return So then, what is real connection? It is presence. It’s being witnessed in our wholeness — not just our highlight reel. It’s communal care. It’s a shared breath. Shared silence. Shared story. It is the remembrance that we belong — to one another, and to something greater than ourselves. Jung would call this the reunion with the Self — a return not just to intimacy with others, but to soul-level grounding in who we truly are. At The Jung Center’s Mind Body Spirit Institute, we believe healing happens in relationship — with ourselves, community with each other, and the sacred. This is where we bring the numinous to life. As James Hillman reminds us in The Thought of the Heart and Anima Mundi, our deepest psychological and spiritual healing depends on the return of the soul to the world. To end loneliness, we don’t need more noise–we need more noticing. We need to hold relational space, as the forest does, linked by a vast mycelium network, present into reverent communion. References Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2024). What’s Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness — And How Can We Fix It? Usable Knowledge. Retrieved from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it Miller, Lisa. (2023). The Great Spiritual Decline . Big Think. Retrieved from https://bigthink.com/the-well/the-great-spiritual-decline/ Jung, C.G. (1928). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche , Collected Works Vol. 8, para. 403. Princeton University Press. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community . Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

We live in the age of information- inundated daily with data, news, and seemingly competing perspectives. The clamor creates a cacophony which can be felt internally as well as clearly observed in the collective. This flow of information can be experienced as a tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm or flood the channels for action. To make matters more challenging, as cultural theorist Byung Chul Han notes- information is “Janus-faced– it simultaneously produces certainty and uncertainty.” How can we respond to such an onslaught of illuminating but destabilizing input? As Carl Jung has always emphasized, a reliable first step involves cultivating self-awareness. Through ongoing, deep introspection and discourse with the wisdom of those around us, we identify our distinct nature. As James Hollis advised us, we need to “access our inner compass, the promptings of the psyche that help us find our way through the complex thickets of choice.” The art of composing contour, discerning boundaries, and carving out the path ahead is at once personal and relational. It aligns us in the midst of disorienting circumstances. Immersed in this active process, we uncover our own creative fingerprints, the unique offering which we contribute to the evolving design. Supported by our community- through clumsy but genuine reciprocity and mutual care, we are delivered into uncharted and renewing territory. One established practice of collaborative self reflection is the ‘life review’. Hospice professionals and death-tenders have long documented the transformation and healing which comes from imagining our personal narratives and mythos in a structured way. Therapeutic professionals, and the clients they serve, have realized this process is also constructive before end-of-life– for caregivers, those at midlife transitions, or anyone aiming to approach their own story intentionally. A recent piece from The New York Times, A ‘Life Review’ Can Be Powerful, At Any Age , explores this expansion and informed the creation of our Summer Lunch & Learn offering, “Reimagining Your Story Through the Eyes of Wisdom”. This introductory hour is followed by an opportunity for deeper, collaborative practice through a workshop series. The collective dreaming and practice here invites us into the empowering experience of being an authority in imagining our own life stories. Other Summer programming with The Community for Conscious Aging includes delving into Drew Leder’s ‘Chessboard of Healing’, which highlights the strengths and shadows of various coping strategies that keep us afloat as we navigate troubled waters. A Lunch and Learn explores identity and resilience for those making the midlife transition– especially those in the “sandwich generation” who practice the precarious balancing act of caregiving for elders while also parenting and, somehow, trying to self-actualize. A book study engages the question- how do we imagine ourselves beyond the roles we’ve been prescribed, or adopted out of necessity, so that we can more deeply experience soulfulness? And a virtual workshop approaches the timely issue of growing older alongside the digital age.  When we find ourselves facing daunting thresholds or deluges of information which threaten to blot out guiding light, I’m reminded of the voice of Joseph Campbell, “The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.” The Community for Conscious Aging welcomes your voice to our space for envisioning, and experiencing, relational clarity and wholeness.