Solitude

 

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Solitude

Most people live at the circumference of life and a few who like to be at the centre. Living at the circumference is easy, cheap, because everybody is living there. Living at the centre is a challenge, because there we will be living all alone. There is no crowd at the centre. And we all know that it takes great courage to be alone, that’s why very few people have been able to know their innermost core, because that journey has to be done all alone, solitarily.

Meditation prepares us for this journey. It transforms one’s loneliness into aloneness, our sense of solitariness into solitude – that is the ‘miracle’ of meditation. There is a great difference between the feeling of loneliness and experiencing aloneness, between solitariness and solitude.

Solitariness has negative connotations whereas solitude is positive. The sense of solitariness within one is like a sore wound which keeps hurting, we want to cover it, keep applying some balm, which is always a temporary solution. When we are feeling solitary or lonely, we seek company so that we can forget our loneliness. Solitude is like a mountain peak, like Everest. A single moment on that peak is more valuable than the time spent amidst crowds during our whole life. Our single moment of solitude. That single moment is so healthy, so complete, so whole – peaceful, silent, joyous!

Meditation’s whole function is to transform the negative into the positive, to transform the miserable into the blissful. Once we have tasted the joy of being alone, the beauty of solitude, we can rush in — then there is no problem, then the journey is a joy. That each moment, the joy becomes bigger and bigger, each moment it is more and more incredible, each moment we are surprised because we were thinking that we had reached the last — now what more there can be? But again, there is more: once we reach one peak suddenly, we see another peak waiting ahead of us, higher. And it goes on, it is an endless journey.

As we start coming closer and closer to our centre, our behaviour on the circumference changes. It becomes more and more loving, compassionate, calm, friendly. It becomes less greedy, less angry, less jealous, less possessive. It becomes more and more a song, a dance, as if suddenly a spring has come into our life and thousands of flowers are bursting forth.

And when we have reached to the very centre of our being, we have known all that is worth knowing — knowing oneself one knows all. The name of that innermost core is the supreme self. 

It is not YOUR-self. ‘You’ are left far behind, ‘you’ are left on the circumference. The ego is no more there so ‘you’ are no more there, but in a way ‘you’ exist for the first time but egolessly. That is the meaning of the supreme self: egoless experience of one’s being.