The Dance of Solitude and Community

Each of us is utterly alone inside a bracingly unique experience of being, while at the same time surrounded by others. During the course of a day, we can move back and forth between solitude and community, moment to moment. In the 21st Century, we even can do this dance while sitting alone in our home or office on the community.

 

What's the point of this solitude-community dance? Oddly, it seems not particularly connected with the experience of loneliness, as we can feel lonely in a crowd or not lonely while alone. So, if our strategy to be in community is to avoid a feeling of loneliness, it may not work. Loneliness seems to be more closely related to not being fully seen in our uniqueness than to whether we are alone or with others.

 

So if not that, then what?

 

One take on it is that both sides of the dance can offer us a path to living as Unique Self. On the one hand, solitude can provide an opportunity for the quiet needed to hear the musings of the mind, the longings of the heart, which listening is essential to the detection of one's unique yearnings, unique obligations, unique path.

 

On the other hand, community not only can provide an important support to one's practice, it also provides us the grist for important work with shadow. Our fellow humans can not only reflect back to us what we cannot see about ourselves, they also can catch our projections of the disowned portions of ourselves. As we've covered elsewhere, following the breadcrumbs of these shadow elements can lead us on a path that goes straight to realization of Unique Self. The keys to heaven can be found in the shadows.

 

Now, there's no guarantee that the dance will take us on this path. In fact, the dance might take us away from the realization of Unique Self. Solitude can lead to an isolation and numbing that blinds us over time to who we are, just as community can distract or distort our sense of self.

 

Then what are we to do with this dance, if there is nothing inherent in solitude or community that is supportive of our life's journey?

 

The trick, it seems, is to bring consciousness to the solitude and the consciousness. Ask, "what kind of solitude?" and "what kind of community?"

 

When you are in solitude, are you allowing the silence that is the great gift of solitude? Can you actually hear your thoughts, feel your emotions, sense your body's state? Or do you fill your solitude with noise that prevents solitude's gift from arriving?

 

When you are in community, have you chosen a community that supports your practice, provides a sounding board for exploration, and brings consciousness to your relationship to the community? Or does the community conspire to prevent your practice and foster your delusions?

 

You see, there's nothing inherent in being alone or with that supports or hinders our path to Unique Self realization.

 

It's all in the consciousness we bring to either solitude or community. Only with that consciousness can we open the gifts that either solitude or community lays at our feet.

 

Tom Goddard, December 21, 2011