How to feel happy with solitude
27/05/2019 at 4:34 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: creativity, innermost feelings, meditation, reflections, travel, wellbeing
“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt in solitude, where we are least alone.” (Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
In June my meditation groups will be focusing on solitude. This is an edgy word: too similar to loneliness for some tastes. Yet, as countless creative people have found, something happens when you face up to silence and emptiness. If there is another way to write a book, a poem or a dissertation, I don’t know it.
I have travelled on my own, a little. At first I found it the loneliest thing. Like an orphan abroad, I kept looking for others who would see me in some role or other in relation to them. I was so used to being a partner, parent, daughter, colleague, friend. But in my travelling I had no role, beyond that of a stranger passing through.
Thank goodness, somewhere along the way there was a tiny ‘click’ in my awareness. I realised that solitude was never to be viewed in relation to absent people. It was a rich, full activity in itself. Then the emptiness of the moment became filled with insights. My mind was energised and I felt happy again.
Meditation, of course, is a way of reaching the infinite through solitude. But so is travelling, gardening, walking, running, swimming, even sitting in a café writing that book or dissertation. When you reach the point of truly inhabiting solitude, that’s when somehow you connect with the universe in its entirety. And that’s when you’re part of the flow.
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Suzanne Askham 
Thanks so much Suzanne! This is so totally true….it really is about allowing….and being alone is not the same as loneliness….quite a few people I have met are not able to be silent, or quiet within or have a quiet house even; they always have TV or music on….they fear the quiet….whereas I love this….in the quiet spaces and places, there is an enormous connection to the All….and it feels marvellous. So, I agree we need to be part of the flow, but only when we realise that we created the noise to block our fears and worries, and then that we can let it go…and bring in peace and quiet instead…..it feels so good! Glad you found your inner happy again! Sending you love and Angel hugs, Barbara xxxxxx
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Comment by spirited13— 28/05/2019 #
I love the way you’ve developed the idea here, Barbara: we create the noise to block our own fears… so true! The photo btw came from Mount Ainslie in Canberra, not so far from you, during the travelling time that I refer to in this post. Sending love to you from our Englsh late spring to your Australian late autumn. May it be a good one for you. xxx
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Comment by Suzanne Askham— 28/05/2019 #