Finding Freedom in the Practice of Solitude

In solitude, we purposefully abstain from interaction with other human beings, denying ourselves companionship and all that comes from our conscious interaction with others. We close ourselves away, we go to the ocean, to the desert, the wilderness, or to the anonymity of the urban crowd. This is not just rest or refreshment from nature, though that too can contribute to our spiritual well-being. [00:03:41]

Solitude is choosing to be alone and to dwell on our experience of isolation from other people. Solitude frees us. Now, this is the why. Why should I do Solitude? Why would I want to go and be alone like that? For many of us, aloneness is really painful. The spiritual disciplines are always about Freedom. That's true of disciplines in general. [00:04:12]

The reason that we practice spiritual disciplines is always so that I will have the freedom and the power to do what needs to be done in the right way at the right moment. The disciplined person is not the person that practices a lot of disciplines. The disciplined person is the one who's able to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. [00:04:46]

In solitude, I go away from other people, and the reason this is so powerful is there's just patterns of interaction. What do you expect to be? What are you looking for from me? How do I try to please you or deal with you, or how do I get from you what I want to get from you? And all of those things lock us into certain patterns of thought and behavior. [00:05:03]

When I'm alone in the Cabana all by myself and not even Tim this year, then I'm free. That's what Solitude does. Dallas writes this: it takes 20 times more amphetamines to kill individual mice than it takes to kill them in groups. Experimenters also find a mouse given no amphetamines at all will be dead within 10 minutes of being placed in the middle of a group on the drug. [00:05:38]

In our world, we talk a lot about being individuals, but our Conformity to social pressure is hardly less remarkable than that of mice. And so if we look in the Bible, for example, at the life of Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, the first thing that he does after being baptized is to go into the desert and the Wilderness for 40 days of being alone with his father. [00:06:14]

When he had spent 40 days of solitude and prayer and fasting, he was not in a position of great weakness; he was at a point of Greater strength. And that's what we so don't often understand. So how do I go about practicing solitude? Well, when I first started to learn about this, I thought, all right, I want to take the next free day that I have and go spend it in solitude. [00:06:57]

Here's a real important aspect of solitude: it's a practice of abstinence. That means the main thing about Solitude isn't what you do; it's what you don't do. You don't engage in conversation, you don't engage in stimulation, you're not around other people, and then I begin to discover what's going on in my mind. [00:07:49]

I began to experience freedom. I realized, you know, I can so easily get captivated by how do people think I'm doing my job and how are people evaluating my life, and when I go to be alone, I can feel in my body this sense of freedom from that. Now it doesn't matter. Practices like Solitude are self-validating. [00:08:29]

Sometimes people who are extroverts will say, you know, I want to bring along books and Ted Talks to listen to and songs that I can experience. No, no, no, that's not Solitude. In solitude, I get away from all of the external scaffolding of life to be alone with God. And Nancy will say sometimes I wouldn't mind Solitude if I could just bring some other people along with it. [00:09:42]

When I go into Solitude, I'm bringing me with my own mind, and my mind doesn't become magically different in those moments, so it wanders all over the place. And I found myself with all kinds of fantasies about being successful or fantasies about being angry and getting even with somebody. Instead of thinking those are interruptions in my time with God, I had to learn actually if my mind keeps wandering to something, probably that's precisely the thing I need to talk with God about. [00:10:19]

That's what the practice of solitude is, why we engage in it to experience freedom from the pressure of other people, and how you can just have some moments today of miniature Solitude times when you are alone and you invite God to be with you, and then you just notice what's going on in my mind, what's going on in my body. God, when I'm alone, could I be at home with you today? [00:11:01]