"There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death,
but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity."
Emily Dickinson
"That state is close to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness meditation:
a state of awareness and concentration where you maintain your focus on the present moment,
while calmly acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations."
"Buddha drew the same distinction between social and psychological solitude that we saw above.
He considered physical seclusion to be the most important, and saw psychological solitude state of non-attachment where the mind was kept free of negative thoughts and emotions.
For him, the ‘good’ reasons to seek solitude were to reflect or examine yourself, to support spiritual growth or simply for the contentment of being alone."
"researchers have found many of us dislike being left alone with our thoughts, and would rather do almost anything else.
So you might have to push through some internal resistance to discover what mindfulness can do for you.
Focused contemplation isn’t exclusive to Buddhism. In the fourteenth century, an anonymous Christian mystic wrote a work called The Cloud of Unknowing,
encouraging the faithful to pursue reflective solitude and contemplative prayer as a way to get to know God better."
CoSo in a nutshell?
re SM:
"Staying networked isn’t necessarily an inferior form of solitude;
it’s just a different way of being alone. It’s about deliberately letting other people’s words, voices or presence into your aloneness, in a way that you control.
Networked solitude retains the vital element of choice:
you decide which connections you to make, how long to maintain them and when to let them go."
May Sarton on the luxury of a period of time to be alone:
"We are one, the house and I, and I am happy to be alone—time to think, time to be.
This kind of open-ended time is the only luxury that really counts and I feel stupendously rich to have it."