He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
— ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself.
— JOHN DONNE
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
— PAUL TILLICH
Solitude has long been recognized in many cultures as an opportunity to look inward, but in our current cultural climate seeking solitude is often considered unhealthy. Many psychologists and other therapists say we are social beings and claim that meaning is found only through relationship with other people. For me, this is only partially true. We are also spiritual beings, and to be fully human we need relationship not only with other people but with the nonhuman world, our own inner depths, and with Something Greater. In solitude there is the opportunity to deeply explore all these domains of relationship.
What is it that calls or drives some people into solitude? Abraham Maslow, in his study of the human hierarchy of needs, found a greater detachment and desire for privacy in self-actualizing individuals, but Anthony Storr writes:
Most psychiatrists and psychologists agree that human beings differ in temperament, and that such differences are largely inborn, however much they may be fostered or suppressed by the circumstances of childhood and by subsequent events in a person’s life. This is especially true when considering the individual’s reaction to solitude. At the very least, we all need the solitude of sleep; but, in waking life, people vary widely in how much they value experiences involving human relationships and how much they value what happens when they are alone.1
Storr also describes how our feelings may urge us to leave our habitual social setting to spend time alone:
In the ordinary way, our sense of identity depends upon interaction both with the physical world and with other people.... My relationships with my family, with colleagues, friends, and less intimate acquaintances, define me as a person who holds certain views and who may be expected to behave in ways which are predictable.
But I may come to feel that such habitually defining factors are also limiting. Suppose that I become dissatisfied with my habitual self, or feel that there are areas of experience or self-understanding which I cannot reach. One way of exploring these is to remove myself from present surroundings and see what emerges. This is not without its dangers. Any form of new organization or integration within the mind has to be preceded by some degree of disorganization. No one can tell, until he has experienced it, whether or not this necessary disruption of former patterns will be succeeded by something better.2
In our culture, specialization has been carried to such an extreme in the service of efficient productivity that daily life can become narrow and boringly repetitious. Activities we used to enjoy in childhood and youth are lost to the demands of adulthood. In wilderness solitude there is the need and the opportunity to do everything for oneself. For me, the satisfaction of self-reliance is one of the joys of living alone in the wilderness.
Solitude can provide a respite from the demands of social life, in which personal healing might take place. In the words of Father Henri Nouwen:
Although the desire to be useful can be a sign of mental and spiritual health, in our goal-oriented society it can also become the source of a paralyzing lack of self-esteem. More often than not we not only desire to do meaningful things, but we often make the results of our work the criteria of our self-esteem....
When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our souls to the many grade-givers.... A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only source of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends, with whom we share the gifts of life.... In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.3
Solitude provides an opportunity to investigate the sense of alienation many of us experience in our culture and to realize that being alone is not identical with feeling isolated and lonely. The core of my loneliness, when I feel lonely, is not separation from other people, but feeling disconnected from myself and from Spirit. In the absence of external judgments, I can see more clearly how often I demean myself, and I can begin to develop a sense of intrinsic self-worth. Paradoxically, choosing to spend time alone can help heal our sense of alienation from others.
Possibly the most often cited reason for going into solitude is to seek spiritual communion. This involves surrender of individual autonomy to something greater: God, Spirit, Nature, or our human family. Charles Alexander Eastman writes about the attitude of American Indians toward the Eternal, the “Great Mystery” — before contact with Europeans:
The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker.4
According to David Abram, the shaman in many aboriginal societies spends time in solitude so he can mediate between the human and supra-human realms. Although such surrender and communion are commonly acknowledged in religious writings, many secular authors do not seriously discuss them.
DEFINING SOLITUDE
In Solitude: A Philosophical Encounter, Philip Koch identifies three features that define solitude — physical isolation, social disengagement, and self-reflectiveness — but argues that the essence is disengagement from other subjects:
What, then, is solitude? It is a time in which experience is disengaged from other people. All of the other features of solitude that come intuitively to mind, the physical isolation, the reflective cast of mind, the freedom, the silence, the distinctive feel of space and time — all of these flow from that core feature, the absence of others in one’s experiential world.5
I agree with this definition, but would add a caveat. Solitude may not depend on the physical absence of others or even the absence of others in our consciousness, but rather on how we react to their presence. If we engage with others, in either a positive or negative way, we are not alone. However, if we do not reach out to beckon them closer or push them away, but simply notice their presence, we remain free in our solitude. Finally, though, trying to define solitude is, like trying to define relationship, an impossible task, since there is no one thing called solitude. The experience varies among individuals and within one individual across time and circumstance.
By almost any definition, living alone in the wilderness is solitude; even so, I have always been keenly aware of how my felt relationship with other people and with the world around me changes. Even while I remain physically apart from and generally out of communication with others, the quality of my solitude varies widely. At times, I’m fully engaged with the present moment, with the flow of the nonhuman world, with the mysterious presence of Spirit. At other times, I’m lost in memories of being with people or in imagining future social interactions.
When building the cabin, I often wondered how what I was creating would seem to Patti. Was I in solitude at those times? When writing an email to request information about my electric system from a tech support person, was I in solitude? When I’m writing in my journal and sly thoughts of an imagined future reader creep into my mind, am I in solitude? In some sense it may be impossible to ever completely leave the cultural matrix, since the consciousness with which I experience solitude is itself a collective cultural phenomenon.
Koch also identifies five virtues — valued states or activities — most easily realized in solitude: Freedom, Attunement to Self, Attunement to Nature, Reflective Perspective, Creativity. I would add a sense of vibrant aliveness. My journal contains many scattered references to these virtues, and I have considered using them as a framework to organize and describe my experience, but to what end? If I were to do so, I and the reader would gain little and we would lose much of the spontaneous immediacy of the journal.
OBJECTIONS TO SOLITUDE
There are also objections to spending time in solitude. Until recently, I’d never questioned whether spending time alone is psychologically healthy or socially acceptable; it has simply been an important part of my life since I was a young boy. I’ve discovered, though, that there has been a rich and sometimes acrimonious argument about the matter, at least since biblical days.
Ecclesiastes (4:9–12) warns:
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their
labor.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is
alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm
alone?
And if one prevails against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold
cord is not quickly broken.
But the great biblical mystics Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus all went into
solitude to face their demons and commune with God alone. Since then there have been many others who have condemned the point less selfishness of spending time alone. David Hume snarls that:
Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society, neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper.6
Storr credits object-relations theorists with fostering the current widespread belief that the only value and meaning in life are found through social relationships:
If we were to listen only to the psycho-analytic “object-relations” theorists, we should be driven to conclude that none of us have validity as isolated individuals. From their standpoint, it appears that we possess value only in so far as we fulfill some useful function vis-à-vis other people, in our roles, for example, as spouse, parent, or neighbor. It follows that the justification for the individual’s existence is the existence of others.7
Apart from the dangerousness and apparent uselessness of spending time alone, perhaps the most common objection to solitude is that withdrawing from social engagement is self-indulgent and irresponsible. Thoreau answers this at length in the conclusion to Walden, and Nouwen writes:
Many arguments for the value of solitude do not defend solitude in and of itself, but only the beneficial effect it can have on one ’s relations with other people and one’s contribution to society.
Solitude is essential to community life because in solitude we grow closer to each other.... We take the other with us into solitude and there the relationship grows and deepens. In solitude we discover each other in a way which physical presence makes difficult, if not impossible. There we recognize a bond with each other that does not depend on words, gestures or actions and that is deeper and stronger than our own efforts can create.... There we grow closer to each other because there we can encounter the source of our unity.8
And also:
In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart.9
Social responsibility is a balance of give and take. My own sense of responsibility and belonging to a social network seems to deepen in solitude. After my first long wilderness retreat, I volunteered to teach organic vegetable gardening for two years in the rural mountains of the Dominican Republic. After this retreat, I trust I will also find ways to contribute to the lives of others.
At times, when I’m unhappy and confused, I wonder if spending time alone is selfish, but when I’m clear I realize I cannot know what contribution I’m making to the world. I’m part of the world, and to the extent I heal myself — assuming wilderness solitude promotes healing — I heal the world. To say a solitary is shirking responsibility is to claim to understand the full workings of reality. All we can do is be true to our deepest calling and trust that we are doing what we are meant to do.
To the objection that solitude is escapist and that the choice for solitude is a choice for a world of unreality, Koch replies: “Direct encounters with Nature, Self, and the Mysterious in solitude are in fact generally acclaimed to feel more self-authenticating, more luminous with Being, than most social encounter.”10Many of the claims that solitude produces deleterious effects are couched in terms with loaded meanings that are often carelessly conflated. Thus solitude, aloneness, isolation, alienation, loneliness, and longing are sometimes used interchangeably, even though they have quite different meanings. Aloneness, for example, refers to a physical state, while loneliness and alienation are emotional experiences.
Perhaps we should use the term solitude to refer to the experience of spaciousness in being alone, and isolation to the experience of being cut off. The feeling of isolation does not depend on external circumstance. Alone in the wilderness, I often feel isolated not only from others (in my mind and heart) but also from the nonhuman world around me; from Spirit; from myself. At other times, with no change in physical circumstance, I feel fully integrated into the flow of the universe, which includes not only the world immediately around me but also my web of human relationships. Nor are loneliness and longing identical. I often feel lonely in solitude without actually longing to be with anyone. Perhaps my longing for another person, when it arises, is actually longing for my lost connection with myself and with Spirit.
CONTAINMENTS AND COMPLETIONS OF SOLITUDE
Can we ever be completely alone or completely engaged with others? In Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz writes: “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”11Marcel Proust puts an even sharper edge to it:
Not withstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of friendship, politeness, deference and duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary he is lying.12
Ken Wilber and Christian de Quincey, on the other side, argue that intersubjectivity is fundamental. Our sense of isolation arises from a particular perceptual angle. Buddhism sometimes claims that all sense of separateness is an illusion. One reason for going into solitude is to explore the unity that lies beneath our apparent aloneness; beneath the need to connect through social engagement, mediated by language. For me, the only way to satisfactorily answer the question, “Are we truly alone, locked into separate minds and bodies?” is experientially through a transformation of consciousness.
M. C. Escher’s drawing Bond of Union beautifully depicts our situation. Each of us has a distinct perception of the world, and we can never know the actual experience of another. We are profoundly alone. Yet we can intertwine and to some extent share our experiences. More, if we are willing to quiet our minds and peer beyond the allure of language, we might discover that we are fundamentally united. But the drawing is not inclusive enough, because I sometimes experience all people and all nonhuman organisms as manifestations of our common flowing Life. And finally, the planets among which we float are us. Our sense of separateness, while not exactly an illusion, is not the whole truth.
In discussing how solitude and relationship fit together, Koch develops the notion of containment. Social relations act as a container for our time in solitude, just as our solitariness is always present in our relationships. In interweaving these two aspects of our being, he heals the false dichotomy between social and solitary.
He depicts the lives of St. Anthony and other Desert Fathers as an example of containment. Even though each lived a solitary life out of sight and hearing of the others, they met for prayer once a week, assisted each other in times of need, and always welcomed guests with hospitality. Their solitary lives were pursued within a web of social and spiritual relations. I believe, though, that this containment can be (and in the lives of true solitaries is) reversed. Relationship with God, Spirit, or nonhuman nature becomes the containment for social relationships.
Some of the layers of containment for my retreat are: the Buddha, the Dharma, and my Sangha; the one-year timeframe and subsequent return to the social milieu; journal writing; and the memory of my first long retreat into wilderness solitude. I work to expand, dissolve, or at least soften the boundaries of my conceptual containment, to relax my grip on social identity and settle into the mystery of living in the present moment.
Koch also speaks of the completions of solitude: the experience is completed in sharing it with others. I find this need in myself and question it. If I claim that solitude is valuable and meaningful in and of itself, but I need to share, even validate, the experience through journaling, am I living a lie? Is trying to share our solitude a futile endeavor, in any case? Perhaps some experiences are so sacred they should be honored in silence and not be diffused or profaned by trying to talk about them.
Koch presents points of view from both sides of the argument concerning fundamental human nature — solitary or social — and concludes:
Collecting all these observations in a summary: the ways in which communicative encounters with other people are incomplete have either been falsely exaggerated by the lonely philosophers, or, when true, do not prove that aloneness is any more ultimate a state than encounter.
And
What is the place of aloneness in human existence? Given the failure of arguments to the contrary, I am inclined to accord to it an equal status with encounter. Both are states of Being and Knowledge, both are full of illusions and lies.13
IS SOLITUDE FOR EVERYONE?
Petrarch, defending solitude from the fourteenth century, wrote: “I am not so much proposing a rule for others as exposing the principles of my own mind. If it commends itself to anyone, let him follow its suggestion.”14Thomas Merton, with his tendency toward global prescription, promoted a stronger view:
Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.... If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man.15
Nouwen, using Christian language I must translate into my own idiom, reminds me that the dark times I experience in solitude do not arise simply from my own neuroses, but are a manifestation of the difficulties faced by anyone who turns inward. In his words:
In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me — naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived. Broken — nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. But that is not all. As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Anger and greed begin to show their ugly faces. I give long, hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I am wealthy, influential, and very attractive — or poor, ugly, and in need of immediate consolation. Thus I try again and again to run from the dark abyss of my nothingness and restore my false self in all its vainglory....
The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone.... That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But this struggle is far, far beyond our own strength. Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.16
We each have a social identity, a persona held in place by our interactions with other people. In solitude, without others to mirror this persona, it begins to lose solidity and dissolve. The process can be terrifying, and one powerful aspect of solitude is that there are few easy escapes from such difficult experiences. There is opportunity and necessity to face inner darkness. Emotional cycles — both highs and lows — usually modulated by social engagement, can become extreme. In solitude I experience a full range of emotions, from feeling painfully isolated to feeling joyfully woven into my physical surroundings and into my fabric of personal relationships. I discover that I’m not identical to the conception I often have of myself as an isolated individual. I’m more fluid and profoundly part of the flowing whole.
Koch recognizes that he cannot objectively defend the value of solitude; that it is an inner debate between our various selves about how we wish to live our lives: “My purpose, rather, has been to enable us to better understand the origins of certain inner questions which nag at our solitude.”17I find his writing valuable in that it makes more visible the interweaving of solitude and engagement in my own life.
The claim that we can find real value and meaning in our lives only through intimate interpersonal relationships has not been widespread in our culture for very long, but its power is difficult to resist. Even after the wonder, peace, and joy I’ve experienced in solitude, I still feel at times that something vital is missing from my life when I’m not involved in an intimate physical relationship with a mate. No matter how rich my engagements with nonhuman nature and Spirit (as well as with friends and family), I sometimes lose my balance and slip into despondency when I live in a solitary state.
This feeling of lack is more difficult to accept in the city than it is in the wilderness. When I’m feeling the pain of loneliness and longing in solitude, I can justify it by telling myself, “Well, of course I hurt. Look where I am and what I’m doing.” In the city, it’s easy to feel that no one wants to be with me and to forget that I actively choose to be alone because I find peace, joy, and fulfillment in solitude. The boundary between solitude and engagement does not always seem permeable to me, but a wall I must climb — in both directions. I often feel isolated rather than simply alone, and I continue to work to make the boundary more porous.
The value of spending time in the wilderness has been studied empirically by Robert Greenway, who has been leading groups of students on two- to four-week retreats for many years. Spending three days alone is an option for those who wish. He has documented the following effects of the experience on some of his students:
90 percent of respondents described an increased sense of aliveness, well-being and energy;
90 percent stated that the experience allowed them to break an addiction (defined very broadly — from chocolate to nicotine and other foods);
80 percent found the return [to “civilization”] initially very positive;
53 percent of those found that within two days the positive feelings had turned to depression;
77 percent described a major life change upon return (in personal relationships, employment, housing, or lifestyle);
38 percent of those changes “held true” after five years;
60 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women stated that a major goal of the trip was to conquer fear, challenge themselves, and expand limits;
57 percent of the women and 27 percent of the men stated that a major
goal of the trip was to “come home” to nature;
60 percent of all respondents stated that they had adopted at least one ritual or contemplative practice learned on the trip; 18 percent of those studied longitudinally (nine out of fifty) stated that they were still doing the practice after five years;
92 percent cited “alone time” as the single most important experience of the trip; getting up before dawn and climbing a ridge or peak in order to greet the sun was cited by 73 percent as the second most important experience. “Community” or fellowship of the group was cited by 80 percent as the third most important experience.18
But Greenway makes no universal claims about the supposed beneficial effects of spending time in the wilderness:
I do not believe the therapeutic effects of wilderness can be proven by scientifically objective measures and with statistical confidence. Nor am I fully confident that, within the dynamics of my own culture, these effects are in fact therapeutic, whether proven or not. I have observed many (mostly futile) attempts to prove beneficial outcomes of various psychotherapeutic approaches and realize wilderness therapy deals with even more variables.
He goes on to say:
While studying the wilderness experience, I honor it as an experience of exquisite beauty, of obvious impact on individuals, and so profound and complex that using the word spiritual seems appropriate. Whatever the wilderness experience is, and whatever its benefits, it is worthy of respect and a flexible research approach.
As with much participatory anthropological research, my approach has been rooted within the process and confirmed by experience. Objectivity is an interesting and useful mode of knowing, but should not be mistaken for the reality of experience. I have tried to avoid grabbing hold of symbols and findings to create theories.19
Even though Greenway’s focus is more on the effects of wilderness than of solitude per se, and the retreats he leads are shorter, I find parallels between the effects he has documented and what I experience in wilderness solitude. I, too, although my intention at the beginning of this retreat was to explore solitude through a purely secular lens, have had to admit that I cannot fully live nor write about what is happening without using spiritual terminology.
SURVIVING WILDERNESS SOLITUDE
Living alone in the wilderness demands the ability to survive physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually with minimal external support. Such independence is sometimes frightening, but trusting and relying on oneself is also deeply rewarding.
Survival in the wilderness and survival in solitude require two distinct sets of skills. Both are needed to survive in wilderness solitude. This doesn’t mean there is one standard set that is the same for all people in all circumstances: it depends on topography, climate, and psychospiritual orientation. But a broad range of skills, developed over time, will be called into play.
The ability to build a shelter, stay warm and dry, obtain and prepare food, repair clothing and damaged equipment, maintain personal health, and use a map to navigate on land or water are all necessary physical skills. It is also vital to have the psychospiritual tools and experience to deal with the mental effects of long solitude. There are various ways to do this, but most fundamental is the capacity to experience with equanimity (or to ignore) whatever arises in the mind.