Wow, Brad this is so beautiful These were my exact thoughts as I was sitting here in my living room spending another evening all alone, by choice, in the solitude, peace and lonliness of spirit.

It is enough just to be! I do not need the outside stimulation of another to feel good, bad, or indifferent. The highs and lows one experiences with others evens out within a solitary life and you find yourself at a steady middle state of being. I remember the up and down feelings in love, the fears, the responsibilities, the need for the other to be in a good mood so that I would not crash land, etc. What joy to be solely responsible for your own feelings. You become the captain of your state of mind. Stuff still happens, it comes into everyone's life solitary or with others, but I find being responsible for myself it is much easier to deal with.

Just like you said Brad: "How beautiful just to be," and I will add be here with love.

"It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts." � Henri Nouwen

It is enough just to be!

That is a lucky thing, for even if we are juggling five chainsaws and balancing a dozen plates on our head while riding a unicycle, we wouldn't have added one ounce of "being-ness" to being. What we are doing in such moments, however, is expressing being-ness. But we can also do so while quietly praying, meditating, or watching paint dry.

I believe that louder, flashier, more active moments have no inherent primacy over quieter, softer, less active moments. And vice versa. In the end we're all left with the task of discerning what is right for us. Are we stagnating via our quiet moments or are we via our activity trying to wallpaper over unpleasant emotions and thus prolonging our agony? One could say that spiritual pursuits (including running a marathon or praying to god) help to prepare us to make these discernments. But life's never perfect. Sometimes we just have to be patient. We can't always get what we want. We have to lower our egos a bit and find the beauty in what is, for "what is" is always going to be with us. It's best to learn to live with and appreciate it, eh?

Wonderful words, Freebird.

I believe so much of the angst that we experience � that deep, persistent gnawing in the gut � is there because:

A) Existence is to be cherished and we are fragile
B) When we are anchored only to ourselves and our egos, we our floating around in the dinghy of the RMS Titanic.
C) We have internal achievement drives that are as biologically hard-wired as our heartbeats. Aka, we are built so that we keep moving ahead because we are always made to feel a bit off-balance. We have a natural lean.
D) Our psychological formation, especially from our childhood years, implants ideas and motivations in us that compete with our own natural inclinations and ideas thus leaving us never really able to please either ourselves or others. We remain conflicted.
E) A slight ever-present sense of fear produces a vigilance which is adaptively useful in the Darwinian game of eat-or-be-eaten
F) The creative part of us senses, and reacts to, the sublimity and awesomeness of existence itself
G) We are always, or mostly, living in a "comparison" frame of reference which never lets us settle down into who we are, never lets us rest, and never lets us take peaceful comfort in anything we actually do accomplish
H) As Freud would say, the desire for sex, Sex, SEX!!!
I) All of the above
J) "I" plus others I haven�t thought of yet

Take those thoughts, if you will, to your next prayer or meditation session.

quote:

One of our main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a very fearful thing. For most people, silence creates itchiness and nervousness. Many experience silence not as full and rich, but as empty and hollow. For them silence is like a gaping abyss which can swallow them up. � Henri Nouwen

Session number two might have you considering these things:

1) Consider all the things that you are right now from an "additive" point of you, that what you are experiencing now is made up of a medley of senses, sights, thoughts, feelings, and memories. The moment is complete. Nothing is missing.
2) Stick every single problem, disappointment, disillusionment, and bad feeling that you have in a basket and set it on one side of an imaginary scale. On the other side of the scale put the love you have for something in this world that you truly love. Notice how love can�t be weighed down. It just hovers above the scale refusing to be weighed and compared. There is freedom in that.
3) Consider that the worst possible thing that could happen to you is that all of your wishes could come true. You could be rich�and join a long list of those brought down by money. You could be famous�and join a long list of those corrupted by fame. You could go on and on down the list and there is always the distinct possibility that your dream could become your worst nightmare. Now, consider your life as it is as the fulfillment of some kind of dream. It�s not perfect, but it is not the disaster it could be if all our wishes were to come true.
4) Somewhere in this world there is a child who is alone and crying. He or she is in terrible shape and in need of much human TLC. He or she is all but abandoned. Pray for that child and your life is immediately worth everything.

Albert Einstein treasured his solitude and silence above all else including his family, friends and society as a whole. He further stated as to how painful solitude is in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. Yet he also realized the following quote:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in space and time. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us restricting us to our personal desires and to affections for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassions to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

This is were our compassions for others must grow in our love, prayers, and genuine good will for all of humanity without the distinctions of labels, and judgments, of any kind. In solitude and silence we can feel and be part of this unity of all by the expansions of our hearts embracing all of the Universe and nature.