Hari
Om
Monday is AUM-day; in search of meditation
SOLITUDE. Does
it serve a purpose for the meditator? Does it have to mean 'lonely'? We are
going to explore the writings of a number of notable contemplatives of various
backgrounds and explore the role of solitude in spiritual pursuit. These are
from a collection published by Chinmaya Publications.
A passage quoted from 'The
Eternal Now' by Paul Tillich is now presented.
Sometimes God thrusts us out of the crowd into a
solitude we did not desire, but which nonetheless takes hold of us. The prophet
Jeremiah says -- "I sit alone, because thy hand was upon me." God
sometimes lays hands upon us. He wants us to ask the question of truth that may
isolate us from most men, and that can be asked only in solitude. He wants us
to ask the question of justice that may bring us suffering and death, and that
can grow in us only in solitude. He wants us to break through the ordinary ways
of man that may bring disrepute and hatred upon us, a breakthrough that can
happen only in solitude. He wants us to penetrate to the boundaries of our
being, where the mystery of life appears, and it can only appear in moments of
solitude. There may be some among you who long to become creative in some realm
of life. But you cannot become or remain creative without solitude. One hour of
conscious solitude will enrich your creativity far more than hours of trying to
learn the creative process.
In these moments of solitude something is done to us. The centre of
our being, the innermost self that is the ground of our aloneness, is elevated
to the divine centre and taken into it. Therein can we rest without losing
ourselves.
And perhaps when we ask -- what is the innermost nature of solitude? we
should answer -- the presence of the eternal upon the crowded roads of the
temporal. It is the experience of being alone but not lonely, in view of the
eternal presence that shines through the face of the Christ, and that includes
everybody and everything from which we are separated. In the poverty of
solitude all riches are present. Let us dare to have solitude -- to face the
eternal, to find others, to see ourselves.
