by John O'Donohue
There is a lantern in the soul,
which makes your solitude luminous.
Solitude need not remain lonely.
It can awaken to its luminous warmth.
The soul redeems and transfigures everything
because the soul is the divine space.
When you inhabit your solitude fully and experience its
outer extremes of isolation and abandonment, you will
find that at its heart there is neither loneliness nor
emptiness but intimacy and shelter. In your solitude you
are frequently nearer to the heart of belonging and kinship
than you are in your social life or public world.
At this level, memory is the great friend of solitude.
The harvest of memory opens when solitude is ripe.
Your persona, beliefs, and role are in reality a technique or
strategy for getting through the daily routine. When you
are on your own, or when you wake in the middle of the
night, the real knowing within you can surface. You come
to feel the secret equilibrium of your soul. When you travel
the inner distance and reach the divine,
the outer distance vanishes.
Ironically, your trust in your inner belonging
radically alters your outer belonging.
Unless you find belonging in your solitude,
your external longing will remain needy and driven.
There is a wonderful welcome within.
Meister Eckhart illuminates this point. He says that there
is a place in the soul that neither space nor time nor flesh
can touch. This is the eternal place within us. It would be
a lovely gift to yourself to go there often-to be nourished,
strengthened, and renewed. The deepest things that you
need are not elsewhere.
They are here and now in that circle of your own soul.
Real friendship and holiness enable a person
to frequently visit the hearth of his solitude.
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