Physical solitude, exterior silence and real recollection are all morally necessary for anyone wanting to lead a contemplative life. But like everything else in creation, they are nothing more than means to an end. And if we do not understand the end, we will make a wrong use of the means. We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them. We do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is only a secondary end. The one end that includes all others is the love of God.
How can people act and speak as if solitude were a matter of no importance in the interior life? Only those who have never experienced real solitude can glibly declare that it makes no difference, and that only solitude of the heart really matters. One solitude must lead to the other. However, the truest solitude is not something outside you — not an absence of people, or of sound around you. It is an abyss, opening up in the center of your own soul. And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.
The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire. And the person who has found solitude is empty. As if they had been emptied by death.
They have advanced beyond all horizons. There are no directions left in which they can travel. This is a country whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by travelling, but by standing still. Yet, it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover, act — without motion. Labor that is profound repose. Vision in obscurity. And beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
Although it is true that this solitude is everywhere, there is a mechanism for finding it that has some reference to actual space — to geography, and to physical isolation from the towns and the cities of people.
There should be at least a room, or some corner, where no one will find you or disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world, and set yourself free. Losing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you: by sight, by sound, by thought — to the presence of other people.
“But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber and having shut the door — pray to thy father in secret…” Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can. And do not be too quick to change it for another.
City churches are sometimes quiet and peaceful solitudes. Caves of silence where a person can seek refuge from the intolerable arrogance of the business world. One can be more alone sometimes in church than in a room in one’s own house. At home, one can always be routed out and disturbed. And one should not resent this, for love sometimes demands it. But in these quiet churches, one remains nameless: undisturbed in the shadows.
Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which people can take refuge, places where they can kneel in silence — houses of God filled with the silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily. Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly — and not have to take your breath in continuous, short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns. Descend into silence, and worship the sacred in secret. There can be no contemplation where there is no secret.
We have said that the solitude that is important to a contemplative is above all an interior and spiritual thing. We have admitted that it is possible to live in deep and peaceful interior solitude, even in the midst of the world and its confusion. You will never find interior solitude unless you make some conscious effort to deliver yourself from the desires and the cares and the attachments of an existence in time, and in the world. Do everything you can to avoid the noise and the business of people. Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to exploit one another, to laugh at one another, or to mock one another with their false gestures of friendship. Be glad if you can keep beyond the reach of their radios. Do not bother with their unearthly songs. Do not read their advertisements.
The contemplative life certainly does not demand a self-righteous contempt for the habits and diversions of ordinary people, but nevertheless noone who seeks liberation and light in solitude, noone who seeks spiritual freedom, can afford to yield passively to all the appeals of a society of salesmen, advertisers and consumers.
Keep your eyes clean, and your ears quiet, and your mind serene. Breathe God’s air. Work, if you can, under the sky. But if you have to live in a city, and work among machines, and ride in the subways, and eat in a place where the radio makes you deaf with spurious news, and where the food destroys your life, and the sentiments of those around you poison your heart with boredom — do not be impatient, but accept it as the love of God, and as a seed of solitude planted in your soul. If you are appalled by those things, you will keep your appetite for the healing silence of recollection. But meanwhile, keep your sense of compassion for the people who have forgotten the very concept of solitude. You, at least, know that it exists. And that it is the source of peace and joy. You can still hope for such joy. They do not even hope for it any more.
Perfect renunciation establishes one in a state of spiritual solitude: peace, tranquility, clarity, gentleness and joy, in which one is fully disposed for meditation and contemplative prayer. There is no true solitude except interior solitude. And interior solitude is not possible for anyone who does not accept their right place in relation to others. There is no true peace possible for one who still imagines that some accident of talent or grace or virtue segregates them from other people, and places them above them. Solitude is not separation.