Solitude: The Straight Path

Most people are afraid of being alone for an extended period of time. Not speaking to or seeing anyone for a few days is not even an idea worth considering.

Yet solitude is a way to get to the heart of life. As our minds chat away in the world like up and down Pez dispenser heads, the reality of life is always flowing gracefully underneath, flowing as a deep and genuine intelligence at the heart of all existence. We miss it all the time because we are chat chat chatting away.

Conversations are perfect ego boosters, for they reinforce our ideas of ourselves and our ideas of the world. We look for agreement about what we are saying, so we can feel validated and feel as though we have somehow found REALITY, and that we are therefore in POSSESSION of something OTHERS don't have. The sheer ridiculousness of this process is seen quite clearly after one undertakes a block of solitude.

My first experience with solitude began in youth, as most children find moments when they are alone and have only their imaginations to play with. Then I became a farmhand for a farm in Northern California, where the owner of the farm would go away for weeks at a time and leave me alone on the remote property to caretake. And this is where I discovered the merits of being alone and not speaking with others for a large amount of time.

I went back to the city and smaller town life, and eventually the craving to experience even longer bouts of solitude overcame me, and I gave away all of my things and walked into the redwood forest for two months. I slept in a camp I set up high up on a ridge, about a 4 mile hike into the isolated woods, not a single person around to hear any shouts or screams. Just me and the woods.

This was fantastic. And two years later, I went back for a 5 month stint alone in the woods. This took me beyond thunder dome.

5 months in the woods alone is like wiping the windshield after a rain has passed. Sunny, clear, all is obvious.

Now I'm preparing to do a sabbatical of sorts and try a few years alone in the wilderness. Everything you let go in solitude makes you a greater gift to the world in general. Truth is all that matters, and this truth is life.

So, if you find yourself afraid of things like solitude or death or whatever, just go ahead and do some solitude. You'll find many things that were holding you back will fall away easily, such as the need for approval from others. You will take yourself out of the herd mind that Einstein spoke of, and no longer will you be at the mercy of public opinion and mass propaganda.

Knowing is being. But being is missed, so long as we're yap yap yapping.

I'll post more on solitude and potential places to disappear from civilization soon. Thanks for reading, now shut the fuck up and be.