“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.” ~Henry David Thoreau

You don’t need to be a monk to find solitude, nor do you need to be a hermit to enjoy it.

Solitude is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness, and while I don’t bemoan the beauty of this global community, I do think there’s a need to step back from it on a regular basis.

Some of my favorite activities include sitting in front of the ocean, still, contemplating … walking, alone with my thoughts … disconnecting and just writing … finding quiet with a good novel … taking a solitary bath.

Don’t get me wrong: I love being with loved ones, and walking with a friend or watching the sunset with my wife or reading a book with my child are also among my absolute favorite things in the world.

But solitude, in these days as much as ever, is an absolute necessity.

The Benefits of Solitude

The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it’s only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul. Some of the most famous philosophers took daily walks, and it was on these walks that they found their deepest thoughts.

My best writing, and in fact the best of anything I’ve done, was created in solitude.

Just a few of the benefits I’ve found from solitude:

• time for thought
• in being alone, we get to know ourselves
• we face our demons, and deal with them
• space to create
• space to unwind, and find peace
• time to reflect on what we’ve done, and learn from it
• isolation from the influences of other helps us to find our own voice
• quiet helps us to appreciate the smaller things that get lost in the roar

There are many more benefits, but that’s to get you started. The real benefits of solitude cannot be expressed through words, but must be found in doing.

How to Find Solitude

You start by disconnecting.

Take every means of connecting with others, and sever them. Disconnect from email, from Facebook and Twitter and MySpace, from forums and social media, from instant messaging and Skype, from news websites and blogs. Turn off your mobile device and phones.

Turn off the computer … unless you’re going to use the computer to create, in which case, shut off the Internet, close your browser, and shut down every other program used to connect with others.

The next steps depend on which of two strategies you use:

1. Holing yourself up. This can be done in your office, by shutting the door and/or using headphones and the calming music of your choice. If possible, let coworkers know you can’t be disturbed during a certain block of your day. Or it can be done at home, by finding a quiet space, shutting the door if you can, or using headphones. The key is to find a way to shut out the outside world, including co-workers or those who live with you.

2. Getting away. My favorite way to find solitude, actually. Get out the door, and enjoy the outdoors. Take a walk, find a park or a beach or a mountain, find a quiet coffee shop, find a shady spot to rest. People watch, or nature watch.

Other tips:

• Try taking a quiet, relaxing bath from time to time.
• Curl up with a good novel.
• If you’re married with kids, ask your spouse to give you some time off to be alone, and then return the favor. Make it a regular swap.
• Take a walk every day.
• Get into work earlier, and work in quiet.
• Have a nice cup of tea.
• Try a regular time each day when you’re disconnected.
• Consider limiting the stream.
• Trouble with self-control? Use one of these tools.
• No time for solitude? Try these tips.
• Try sitting still, and focusing on your breath as it comes in and goes out. As your mind wanders to thoughts of the past and future, make a patient note of that, then gently return to your breathing.

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” ~Albert Einstein

Leo Babauta is the creator of Zen Habits. He is married with six kids, lives in San Francisco, and is a writer, runner and a vegan.

Editor’s Note: “The Lost Art of Solitude” originally appeared in Zen Habits.

“Go out and let something in nature speak to you.” What a silly thing for a Retreat Director to say to a group of nuns! I walk aimlessly up and down the rolling paths, hardly registering the green fields, wild flowers and spreading trees. My fellow retreatants, mostly white-haired women dressed in black, eagerly search for some mysterious treasure.

Even though we’re in silence, I break it when encountering kindly Sister Margaret. “Did anything speak to you, Margaret?” I ask jokingly. “Yes, I just realized it! See those blue flowers up there? One of them is speaking to me and I have to go back and listen.” A little ashamed of her sincerity and my skepticism, I watch as she hobbles back up the hill.

I’m 35 years old, a nun since 18, and burned out. Like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story I have journeyed from cloister to missions. I too have known: fervor, striving for perfection, willingness to suffer, working in impoverished areas, burning zeal. But the flame is dwindling and now I walk around with ashen heart.

Listlessly I turn back. I’ll be the one with no story to tell, no stone or twig clutched in my hand, excited to share its amazing personal message. With head down, I trudge along without seeing. But, that’s odd. What is that lying on the ground: small, brown and hollow? Oh, it’s a walnut shell – or half of one. Strange, there are no walnut trees around here.

I pick it up and study it. The inside ridges are more pronounced than the outer smoother shell; the inner grooves are pitted, sharp and dark. Imagine the nut pressed and squeezed until it matched those unyielding convolutions! Suddenly I drop the shell and gasp. Sobs follow and I’m on the ground cradling the shell in both my hands. This is me. Squeezed and pressed into a mold of perfection. Convoluted. Rigid. Never good enough. Try harder. Conform. But where is the nut itself? Where am I? What is left of ME? I grieve wildly for my lost self.

It’s a long time before I can breathe without pain and tears. Slowly, gently, I realize the shell has been cracked open; it’s half gone. Maybe the warm air and sunlight have already enticed my hidden self to start emerging. What would it take to shed the other half? But if I relinquish it all, I’ll be exposed, vulnerable. Who am I without the shape of the institution? I am alone. I am afraid.

I sit with my fears on a dusty path and wait to feel myself crawl back into my familiar shell but it doesn’t happen. Instead, something new begins to grow inside: hope. It won’t be right away. I don’t know when. But I will emerge all the way. Looking up at a nearby tree, I see a bird soar from its branches into the sky. Free.

Mary Dyer Hubbard was a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament for 20 years. After leaving the convent, she met and married Carl Hubbard and the couple lives in Horsham, PA. Mary Dyer Hubbard is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a therapist with the Samaritan Counseling Center since 1995.

Oneness / Home

Evolutionary enlightenist Andrew Cohen writes, “And that’s what the world so desperately needs: mature, enlightened human beings who are willing to wholeheartedly take responsibility for the entire process, forever – to participate in the creation of the conscious universe, with and as the very force that created it. That impulse is . . . your very own Authentic Self.”[i] Authentic Self is that Spark of Divine Fire, that initial God-individuation that is the Greatest/Highest Self; Authentic Self is Oneness with identity.

Built into each of us, sitting in our deepest heart, is a longing for connectedness. Sitting alongside the yearning is a belief and fear that we are ultimately alone.  The longing for connection is about Home, the Great Source of Being that many of us call God. The “good news” is to be found in the truth of the reality of Oneness – meaning that whether or not we know or experience it, we are literally One with All That Is.  Every tree and tank, every hellion and healer, every bully and baby, are One and cannot be separated from the Whole.

That we exist here on this duality planet as unique individuals by necessity means that there exist many distinctly differing paths to bring us Home.  What works for one will not necessarily work for another, and to me, this is part of the beauty and grace of Consciousness Itself, of Creator, of Home.  Eventually, we will come Home to the undifferentiated Oneness.  Yet we can also choose to come Home here and now as our Authentic Selves in form, which means that we must live and “behave as if the God in All Life matters”[ii].

The Keyword of the Times is “Change”

Huge changes are upon us.  Time seems to be speeding up, and the consequences of the conscious or unconscious choices we make show up almost immediately.  This instantaneous response lets us see that there’s no longer any room for doubting our authorship of the experiences we have.  It’s time to wake up to the fact that we, like the God Who made us in its image and likeness, are Holy Creators who must now take authority over both what we will make and what we have made.

We are all in the movement of Life together.  In fact, we ARE the movement, we ARE Life.  Whether we are completely unconscious of this truth, or at the edge flirting with the idea of conscious evolution, or already immersed in the soup and fully engaged in creating a life of deep, profound spiritual responsibility and integrity, the times are calling loudly to each of us to take our place at the table and consciously create a new world.

For the Sake Of

Why the urgency?  Because this Universe and our beloved Earth – a living, conscious Being – will no longer support our hiding behind the mask of separateness, another word for victim consciousness; we simply no longer have that luxury if humanity is to survive and thrive.  You and I must really “get it” that there is literally no separation between us – you are another me and I am another you – and that every choice, every action, and every belief affects the Whole.

For the good of All, for the sake of the Whole, and in service to the One, we must look at what it takes to embody Authentic Self so that we will choose to live and behave as if the God in All Life matters.  We must examine the ways and means of “healing the holdings of the heart” and look at how it is we create both the joy and suffering that we – and others – experience.  When we take such a level of self-responsibility to heal ourselves, we help heal the world by becoming a healing presence wherever we are.  From this embodied authenticity, we love each other back into our forgotten Wholeness by living as Authentic Self, that over-arching Aspect which has never left Home, and which holds the door wide open, waiting for us to remember who we are.

[ii] Phrase taken from the title of Machelle Small Wright’s book, Behaving As If the God in All Life Mattered, published by Perelandra Ltd.

Amy Pierce is an ordained Minister in Integrative Healing with a Master’s degree in Applied Healing Arts. She is well known in North Carolina’s Triangle region for her holistic, ecumenical approach to spirit mind body healing through her teaching and writing, as well as her counseling ministries. Visit  www.authenticself.us or read Amy’s blog: In Spiritual Wonder

At my first Weight Watchers meeting in January 2001, my sister Jennifer and I waited to step on the electronic scale.  I observed the other women waiting:  some looked too skinny to be there; others looked just like me, massive, with flabby skin sweaty with the exhaustion of hauling ourselves around.

I’d been overweight my whole life, and at 21 years old, I was done being the “Fat Girl.”  That day, I was racked with anxiety.  It embarrassed me when even my doctor read the scale, but I closed my eyes and stepped up.  The woman behind the counter filled in my “Starting Weight” box.  238 lbs.  My throat closed.  Oh God, I thought.  Don’t cry, don’t cry.

I knew my body was larger than others.  But seeing that number innocently staring up at me cemented it in my mind—I was fat, huge, massive.  I can’t do this, I thought, this is too much. I pushed down these thoughts that I knew would make me fail before I even began.  I glanced at Jenn’s paper and saw 220 lbs., then showed her mine, clenching my jaw to ward off the still-threatening tears.  Neither of us could believe I weighed that much.

*

Later, I logged on to the Weight Watchers website and tried out the tools.  I checked the charts that told what my healthy weight was:  at 5’5”, I should weigh about 135 pounds—at least a hundred pounds had to go.

I clicked to find out my Body Mass Index.  I needed to face the truth, just like I needed to face that Starting Weight box.  I entered my height and current weight and waited for the computer to process.  Your BMI is 39.7.  According to the explanatory paragraph, a BMI of 20–25 is healthy and a BMI over 30 is considered “very overweight (obese).”

I scored nearly ten points above “obese,” which meant I was unbelievably obese, send-in-the-clowns obese, morbidly obese.  I’d never defined myself by that term—who wanted to call themselves morbidly anything?  Morbid means rotten, near death, overwhelmingly odorous, gruesome, or somehow psychologically depraved.  The woman thought the man morbid because he pinned live insects to cardboard and watched them writhe.  To be morbidly obese meant to be hopeless, disgusting, fit to be examined beneath glass but never touched with bare hands.

*

And then, I was thin.  In hindsight, the transformation feels instantaneous.  In reality, it took about a year until I was satisfied with my body.  In hindsight, it seems effortless.  I followed the program and weight fell off me in little bunches and that was that—the Fat Girl was gone.  At least from the naked eye.

Once, I ran into someone who hadn’t seen me throughout my entire weight loss.  He didn’t even recognize me until I spoke.  Totally new person to him.

And yet, my grandmother said, “You look so much better than you used to.”  Totally repaired person to her.

I never owned my fatness.  I never celebrated it the way some people seem able to do.  I never stood nude before a mirror and said, “Yes, this is me.  I am the bounteous rolls of flesh, I am the thickness of supple thighs, the curves of soft shoulders, the roundness of these hips, the woman of these DD-cup breasts.”

Instead, I didn’t look at my body except in shame and told myself that I was just like all my thin friends.  I was awkward in my fatness, because I didn’t wield it like the weapon it can be in the hands of a girl who doesn’t let the body she has stand in the way of the person she is.  By getting thin, I felt I was excavating from the caverns of fat the girl I really was.  With each pound gone, I felt I was getting closer to her, getting closer to me.

*

At size eight, one could say, I have arrived.  I am at ease in public.  I can concentrate on the book in my hands or the sidewalk beneath my feet because I don’t worry if someone is wondering why that Fat Girl can’t get control of herself.

In many ways, I have become invisible.

Yet, I am seen.  I am seen for my dark brown eyes and shiny auburn hair.  For my slender pianist’s fingers and rosy cheeks.  For my easy smile and sense of humor.

For these things that were there all along.

Kristin Blank earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from American University in Washington, DC.  Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Vermillion Literary Project, and on BettyConfidential.com.  She currently lives in Maryland.