The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN
Theory is good, but it doesn’t prevent something from existing.
— JEAN-MARTIN CHARCOT
My explorations in solitude are a continuing process of personal transformation that opens me more directly to the mysterious unknown. In preparing for this retreat, I decided that instead of entering the wilderness with a set of structured goals and specific questions, as would be usual for academic research, I’d go with an open mind to see what would happen. Rather than trying to confirm an abstract theory about the effects of solitude, I intended to simply remain present to my own actual experience, whatever it turned out to be. I planned for the year to be a sort of hybrid cross between research project and spiritual retreat. I would start from where I was in myself and allow the process of exploration to develop naturally as the months passed.
This approach generated internal tension from both the academic and spiritual threads of my life. On the one hand I felt that in the larger picture I was wasting my time and an amazing opportunity by trying to contort the retreat to fit into an academically acceptable format. On the other hand I questioned whether such personal research was academically valid and what value it had for anyone else. What would it contribute to our common pool of knowledge?
I also met with some skepticism from the academic community. The procedure of studying oneself is academically unconventional. I argued that I had to be both researcher and subject because I could see no alternative for an empirical study of the experience of solitude. If I were to merely read the writings of other solitaries, I would be studying their verbal reports, not their actual experience. On the other hand, if I were to spend time with a solitary to study his or her life, he or she would no longer be in solitude. Both these approaches are valuable, but to deeply explore the actual lived experience of solitude I had to go into the wilderness alone. I also argued that there are many valid approaches to research: One can do a broad survey of a large group of people, or study a few individuals in greater depth. Extending that, one can also do a very detailed study of a single person. Why, then, could that person not be oneself? Of course the issue of objectivity was always raised, but the notion of pure objectivity has long been questioned in many schools of social science.
A common question was: What is your working hypothesis and exact methodology? What is your critical measure? I didn’t actually know what the latter meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it, so I always responded that I didn’t have one. This answer didn’t necessarily satisfy everyone.
Another question frequently asked was: What three disciplines inform your work? One basic criterion for acceptance into UBC’s Interdisciplinary Studies program is that the research cross departmental lines into at least three usually separate fields of study. Hence, people naturally wanted to know what my three disciplines were. But again, the question bothered me. The Interdisciplinary Studies program is based on the “overlapping circles” model, in which three circles are arranged in a triangle so they overlap slightly in the center. That overlap constitutes the common ground and the ways in which the individual disciplines connect to each other. To me, this mind-set seems static and constrained. In my thinking, I let the circles drift apart until they no longer overlap but remain in proximity. Interdisciplinarity is that ambiguous undefined space between them.
My intention was to study my own life and experience in solitude, and a life cannot be sensibly fractured into distinct domains of thought or practice. When I read a book that actually means something to me, I don’t question whether it’s psychology, philosophy, sociology, or spirituality. I’m simply one human being reading the thoughts of another human being.
I didn’t, however, enter solitude empty-handed. I have lived for more than fifty years in Western culture, and I carry with me an arsenal of ideas, beliefs, desires, fears, doubts, and especially memories and expectations from previous times in solitude, which I often use to hold the flowing present moment at bay. My ongoing and sometimes fearful struggle is always to lay down my arms.
My orientation (as much as I’m able) is to be a radical empiricist, willing to experience and value whatever mundane or unusual physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual experiences I have. Living in deep wilderness solitude is an unusual situation that generates unusual experiences, but I believe even rare experiences should be accepted as part of our human potential. We are the sum of all the observations we make. When we refuse to acknowledge certain aspects of our lived experience simply because we cannot make rational sense of them, we impoverish our lives. Self-knowledge is vital to our understanding of the world and our place in it. The important question is not what aspects of experience should be accepted as valid, but rather what are the best methods and perspectives for exploring and understanding each experience.
To investigate solitude, my method is mindful observation layered with analytic introspection, while recording my observations and ruminations in a daily journal. Exploring and writing about such an intensely personal experience is vulnerable to criticism. It may seem hopelessly subjective and self-absorbed. Yet as philosopher Michael Polanyi and psychologist Abraham Maslow, among others, point out, all knowledge is fundamentally personal knowledge. Subjective experience can be transformed into valid public knowledge when one ’s perspective and method are explained, allowing others the opportunity to understand and examine them. Also, I’m not attempting to prove anything or to describe or define solitude in an abstract or objective way. My hope is that my personal experience will resonate with others and deepen our collective understanding of solitude.
In scholarly terms, I’ve chosen a qualitative, rather than a quantitative, research method.1 Qualitative research often tends to be compared unfavorably with quantitative research — as though the former is just a sloppy, individualized instance of the latter in which personal descriptive words are substituted for precise numbers and repeatable results. But this is not the case. The difference between these methods does not lie in degrees of rigor. They are fundamentally different modes of explanation and reflect distinct ways of knowing the world.
In everyday life, we don’t consider an event senseless because it cannot be explained quantitatively. Rather, an event seems senseless when we cannot fit it into the stories we tell to make sense of the world. When asked why we are doing something, we usually answer with a personal narrative, rather than a mathematical equation. However, quantitative knowledge is also important. It allows us to maintain perspective and to place our own immediate experience in a broader context of what others do and experience. One style of knowing and explanation is not better than the other; both are valid, and each complements the other.
THE PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS
I practice a form of mindfulness meditation that is hybridized primarily from the Theravada teachings of Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, and from personal insight into my own mind/body process. This basic mix is seasoned with a sprinkling of Chuang Tsu, Krishnamurti, Pema Chödrön, Chögyam Trungpa, and Alan Watts.
Meditation is an important part of my attempt to put aside personal biases and anxious thoughts to become open to each moment and discover what solitude will bring. Very simply, the intention of the Buddhist meditation I practice is to reduce distractions and focus the mind in a nonjudgmental way on whatever is happening right here, right now: bodily sensations, emotions, feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness, restlessness, sleepiness, doubt, the sense of volition, the process of thinking. Sometimes restlessness prevails; sometimes there is peace; sometimes insight. The objective is not to cultivate any particular experience, but to develop equanimity and compassion: to be with whatever arises; to release our habitual attachment to pleasant experience and avoidance of unpleasant experience; to release the desire to blame when we experience pain.
To meditate, one merely sits quietly and pays attention to the breath. No need to make adjustments. Breathe in and notice the breath, breathe out and notice the breath. Notice the shallow breaths and the deep breaths, just as they are. Notice the still moment between the in-breath and the out-breath. Almost immediately we realize how seldom we are actually present to ourselves and our environment. Watch a breath, watch a second breath, watch the beginning of a third and fwoop, the mind is gone. We are not even aware we were gone until we wake up seconds or long minutes later and realize we have been lost somewhere in planning or remembering, fantasy or analytical thought. Sometimes the mind shuts up for a while and simply notices the flow of experience without offering any commentary. Ahhh.
Use this simple — but definitely not easy — method to steady the mind and pay close attention to the here and now, and all else will follow naturally. Teachers can be important in guiding us over the rough patches and in suggesting avenues for exploration, but our truth is discovered in our own embodied existence in this moment, and this, and this. The practice is not limited to the meditation cushion; as mindfulness develops it carries over to everyday life.
Meditation is not an intellectual activity grounded in thinking. The source of understanding is insight arising from a still mind rather than from discursive analysis. The usual academic approach, from kindergarten to university, is to train the mind to memorize and (with luck) to think logically. Scientific exploration and discovery involve insight and intuition, as well as logical thinking, but I don’t remember ever receiving training in school to develop these cognitive faculties.
In meditative traditions, constant thinking is seen as a symptom of an undisciplined mind. Analytical thinking is of course natural and useful, and is respected, but care must be taken to not become entranced by the thoughts and lose awareness of the thinking process itself.
When we pay attention to the arising of thoughts and bodily sensations, we may gain insight into the relationship between them. We may also gain insight into the relationship between questions and answers. So many questions arise in the mind: Does cultural and personal history determine my life? Do I have free will? Am I separate from the world? How solid are my opinions and the stories I tell about who I am and how the world works? What is enlightenment? Does language constrain experience? Must I live in language? All of these questions arise and dissolve in the mind/body flow, but intellectual speculation does not provide the answers. The questions go on and on until we begin to see through them and to realize that they are only words and may be no more answerable than the question: “Why isn’t the moon made of green cheese?”
There are similarities between meditation and solitude. When sitting in silent meditation, even in a group, each person is alone. In meditation the mind slowly settles and we can see our mind/body processes more clearly. For me, this tends to happen in solitude. Daily I wake up to myself, live with myself, go to sleep with myself. In the absence of conversations with other people, my mind settles and clears, and I’m carried into more intense awareness of mental states, emotions, and bodily feelings.
There are also differences. Alone in the wilderness, I’m often immediately aware of transience, mortal danger, and death. During group meditation I’m not confronted as intensely with existential terror. In a structured meditation setting, a teacher can guide students through personal difficulties, but in solitude I have to face my fear alone, and there is the risk of panic.
Meditation and solitude fit well together. Meditation, for me, is a powerful means to stabilize the intense psychoemotional roller coaster that can develop in the absence of community. Because maintaining mindfulness in a social environment is difficult, solitude can be a powerful spiritual tool. I find that, with few distractions, my mind naturally slows and deepens even without strong self-discipline.
I’m interested not only in the workings of my mind but also in transforming my lived relationship with the nonhuman world. In solitude I’m released from the immediate tangle of the social web and free to explore other levels of existence. I have the opportunity to relax and experience myself as part of the rhythms of nature.
One challenging aspect of using mindfulness and solitude as method is the question of who is doing the exploring and who is being explored. As far as I can tell, these nodes of experience never hold still. In waiting and listening for insight into the nature of the mind/body process, the mind/body process changes. Neither the viewing scope nor what’s under the scope holds still.