When you spend time alone, which most of us do most of the time these days, there are two ways to go. First you could feel shuttered in, landlocked, overcome by a feeling of lack. This is an isolated feeling, like a solitary tree in the meadow. Or when alone, you could feel connected, supported by an unseen presence. In the latter, aloneness is a fertile place to be. Instead of feeling absent and empty, you feel full, like a saturated sponge in a bucket. It sounds paradoxical to say that in being alone you feel full to the brim. It sometimes takes many hours in reflection and careful, patient inspection to come to the point where you feel no lack. It takes time to feel that when alone, you are in the very best company possible. You need not fill your hours with scraps of media, food, or chat. In the tender moments by yourself, yoke to a perpetual presence, an invisible, kindred presence that, as it turns out, is with you all the time.
You see, there is a secret part in each of us that can never be known, or named, or put into language. In your aloneness, you must have the courage and confidence to keep with this invisible company. When Rumi said, “I am a naked man standing in a mine of rubies”, he was speaking to the precious place of solitude, a place rich and abundant.
Do not then let your aloneness be full of distances and deficiencies. Rather, be intimate in your solitude. Take it as an invitation to move closer to the thing that you may have avoided and feared for so long. It is an invitation to belong to something enduring, essential and vital within you. It is something you may feel so deep in your body that it connects you to a body bigger and wider than your own, to love’s own body, the gaia, the body of Christ, the corporation of all beings. Like caulk or glue or rubber cement, aloneness becomes a kind of adhesive binding you together. By this you form a bond, a yoga, that stays with you wherever you go. It is a bond that can never be broken. And ultimately, it is the bond that holds you and I together.
As she sleeps, I hold her hand. At 91, her skin is as delicate as the silky sheath that surrounds the pupa of a gestating butterfly. There are moments when she opens her eyes to let in the smallest band of light, like slits in the blinds pulled down over her bedroom window. When she looks out she is still looking in. Whether her eyes are opened or closed, her consciousness seems to have slipped away like an escaped helium balloon from a child’s unknowing hand. She is becoming part of the infinite that surrounds us and moves through us all. It is a process that we rarely see– and routinely fear– until we drop everything we are doing and sit by its side and pay homage to its mighty presence.
