Five Steps to Harvesting the Fruits and Gifts of Solitude

Americans are deeply ambivalent about the solitary person in our midst. On the one hand, the lone hero is much admired in national folklore. On the other side of our ambivalence is the belief that to be alone, even temporarily, is to have been abandoned and to be sunk in a black misery of loneliness.

Fault finding serves as a means to justify an illusory sense of superiority. To become a love finder requires us to be vigilant and self-realized. Most of us are just regular, ordinary people; therefore, vigilance will be our primary tool for taking note of our blaming and fault finding.

A successful relationship has two very important components: learning to love yourself first, and then learning to love another person. Too many people ignore the first part, then wonder why it’s so hard to love another. It’s like expecting to water a plant with an empty water pitcher. Or trying to put on your child’s oxygen mask when the airplane cabin pressure drops, but passing out from lack of oxygen before you can get it on.

A critical step in the embrace of silence and solitude is setting aside the notion that we have to be "doing something" throughout our waking hours. For most of us, this goes against what we have been taught since childhood...

Each of us has the opportunity to accept and welcome the gift of living fully in the present. When we awaken to the eternal here and now, we feel alive, mobilized, our senses quickened. Each moment fully experienced becomes an integral part of the sculpting of our future. As we live today, we create our tomorrows.

Many people have real challenges in their relationships with other people. Are you one of them? One of the largest contributing factors to your ability to freely enjoy other people depends upon how much you enjoy yourself... how much you accept yourself.

We have all gone through life saying certain things about ourselves, such as: I'm a shy person, or I'm intelligent, or I'm stupid, or I'm clumsy, or I'm slow, etc. Once we understand the power of the word and of the mind, we come to the realization that all of these statements were simply creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

When we stop trying to make ourselves great and simply realize our greatness, it is easy to fall in love with who we are. The greatness that we try so desperately to conjure up is effectively buried beneath our best efforts to make ourselves acceptable.

Our subconscious is a truly wonderful partner. It finds many ways to communicate with us. The other morning, I found myself humming "Slow down, you're going too fast..." Now, that was a clear message. Have you ever paid attention to the songs that you find yourself humming, or whistling?

Our feelings are a foolproof guidance system, letting us know if we are experiencing heaven or hell, love or fear, well being or disease. Using your feelings as your guide is the most direct indicator of whether or not you are being peace and happiness.

We look around at the world's problems and wish they would go away, but they stubbornly persist despite our most heartfelt desires. So we end up living in a kind of ethical haze. It seems that everything and everyone is for sale. Nothing remains sacred.

Nobody wants to feel hopeless. There are some who attach themselves to it because they know nothing else. Even people who are suicidal don't want death as much as they want the pain to stop.

Our understanding of the Emotional System today is still in the Dark Ages. This has its analogy to the time when people's understanding of our Solar System was based upon the belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth, as it certainly appeared that way -- however, just the reverse was true. The problem was, as long as we believed the Sun went around the Earth, we were limited as to how far we could go in the Solar System.

In high school I looked up to my classmate Rick Brown, the quintessential cool guy. He was the good-looking captain of the football team and president of the student council. He had a cheerleader homecoming queen girlfriend and was liked by everyone. I envied Rick because he was at the epicenter of the in crowd, and I saw myself as a distant outsider.

Nothing is more important than feeling good, and it doesn't matter beans how you do it. If standing on your head in Times Square will do it, terrific. If smelling newly cut wood will do it, grand. You know when you're there; you can't miss it. Whether it's just a decision to feel good in the moment...

You are living a life, not running a race. Slowing the pace so you’re not racing and constantly playing catch-up begins one step at a time. And the first step is to understand what motivates your behavior and the comfort the behavior provides you.

As the subconscious mind takes in information from the outside world, things that tend to consistently happen in a particular way begin to form into beliefs. Then these beliefs can become “truths” to us - something we know to be true and don’t question anymore. In many cases these “truths” can be helpful...

I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming, "Don’t follow me -- I’m following my bliss." Good advice! How much more creative and successful would your life be if you remained true to your own inner guidance rather than imitating the paths chosen by others?

Do you find you minimize parts of yourself such as health, emotions, talents, and abilities for the importance of the outer physique? We have been conditioned to equate the media and beauty industries' approved images with success...

The minute you awaken in the morning, access your first feeling and your first thought. That first feeling or thought of the day commonly sets the stage and the tone for the rest of the day. So, if that first feeling/thought is not to your liking, the choice is yours. Right then and there is the best time to change it with feelings/thoughts that ARE of your liking.

The ancient Greeks knew the unexamined life was not worth living. They knew that the knowledge of self was the key to all other knowledge. This is very profound for each of us today.

Relationships are funny... You go around searching for the 'perfect' mate, and of course, the 'perfect' mate turns out to be not so perfect. What happened? Since everyone is your reflection, you ended up with the perfect reflection of yourself. And of course...

The essence of our being is love. What, then, is love? Because it must be experienced in order to be meaningful, I can't define it for you except to say that it is the total absence of fear and the recognition of complete...

Your Inner Compass is constantly sending you signals, but what happens when you don't listen to the signals and act accordingly? Well, the signals don't go away, they simply get louder and more powerful. So when you ignore your Inner Compass, it tries harder and harder to get your attention. This means that what started out as maybe a vague feeling of mild discomfort will become a stronger feeling of discomfort.

Hero worship has existed "forever"... it seems that humans have a need to worship someone or something "greater than" themselves. Whether we choose to worship an external God figure (like a saint), or a hero figure from a comic strip or movie, or the movie stars themselves...

I wrote about my difficulties, my challenges, my full and often overwhelming life as a wife, mother, daughter, and full-time professor with hours of evening paperwork. All of these roles took huge chunks out of me, and my exhausting days were underscored by a line I came upon in my journal, one that actually took my breath away as I read it twenty years later...

Everyone says that they want to change, but who is ready, willing, and able to actually do so? Are we ready to give up the comfy, secure little nest cozily settled at the bottom of those ruts, those psychological habits...

Being asked by someone what we believe our “identity” is can be difficult. Whenever this author hears a police officer on a television show yell out, “Identify yourself, please!” she has to laugh. Should the person respond with “I’m a single woman in her 40s who owns six cats and brews my own beer in my spare time”? Or perhaps, “I’m a Leo, and I love to jet ski and eat junk food”?

We are all becoming ultrasensitive now, and our level of telepathy is increasing. Without realizing it, you may frequency-match the low vibrations and troubled thoughts floating around just below the surface in the nonphysical world — and wonder why your mood suddenly changes from cheerful to somber...

When you do something with a negative attitude or in a negative (resentful) frame of mind, you will get the same kind of results on an energy level. As you sow, so shall you reap.

None of us ever truly forgets the nurturing, warm comfort of the womb. We spend our lives trying to re-create that feeling of being held and protected. Nor do we forget the pain of individuation, of leaving Mother and home. We seek throughout our lives to have the separation and the resulting loneliness filled with meaningful relationships...

Although most of us don't mind doing favors now and then, unhappily, some people have no qualms about inconveniencing others if doing so helps them achieve their goals. Although helping these people may give us some pleasure initially, our good feelings vanish when we finally realize we are being used.

We do not need history to tell us that having created every kind of sacred space around the world has not ensured that human beings are guided by unconditional love and the wisdom of the soul. The missing link is the heart. This is why the wisdom teachings of heart-centeredness are always revolutionary at whatever time and wherever they appear.

Suppose there were a place we could go to learn the art of peace, a sort of boot camp for spiritual warriors. Instead of spending hours and hours disciplining ourselves to defeat the enemy, we could spend hours and hours dissolving the causes of war.

When we talk about it on paper, detaching or reducing our level of attachment doesn't sound so dif­ficult. There is no need to complicate anything; we keep it simple, moving from one interaction to another without becoming too attached to any one outcome. But in life it rarely happens this way...

Willingness to explore your self-imposed limitations is essential to growth and to healing, but you cannot simply decide to be willing. Everything is a journey and a process of unfoldment. You may be saying right now, “I am willing!” And what good does it do you?

About six months into my heartbreak, I had a rude awakening. I was sitting on my bed pulling up my stockings. A mirrored door was ajar and its reflection caught me off guard. In a flash, I recognized the woman hunched over her feet, glowering at the mirror. It was me, caught in a moment of self-revulsion.

A big clue that you’re caught up in the concern for looking good is if you’re burned out, stuck, deadened, resistant, or experiencing a loss of purpose or inner peace. That’s a signal that somewhere in there the real you is missing. When you feel that way, your energy...

Everything comes full circle when you make it a priority to take care of yourself. While I know it’s easier said than done, you will definitely reap the benefits almost immediately when you attend to yourself before you attend to others.

When you live with the belief that something about you makes you weak or not good enough, it is difficult to enter into mutual relationships seeking the best for each person. When you do not see your own belovedness and magnificence, it's difficult to think about being a healthy person, much less imagining a mutual relationship...

I act the same no matter what role I am in—facilita­tor, woman, mother, or teacher. Every single person that I come in contact with in this world deserves all of me—not part of me, but every molecule.

When I first heard of the concept of Self Love, I laughed out loud. I was sure it was the most pretentious and ridiculous idea I’d ever heard. I ridiculed the concept for a good long minute and gave it hell. Then I went back to despising myself (that was so much more “humble” and “honorable”).

Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. – and many other nations around the world – is unprecedented.

It is a paradox that if we cannot open our hearts to ourselves, then we have no foundation for dealing with other people lovingly and compassionately. We've been trained not to ask loving and compassionate questions of ourselves. 

Triggers are hooks that summon emotional experiences of other times when you were frightened, harmed, and helpless. When you succumb to a trigger, you feel a sense of guilt, shame, and failure as you add another layer of fear, punishment, and helplessness to your original experience...

The shift from living with attachment to the judgmental mind to living with kindness is perhaps the most important part of our work with the critic. It requires us to embrace all of who we are — the good, the bad, and the ugly. This can require a radical shift in our inner world...

Passion is a very holy thing. You can lose many material things, but if you lose your passion, you're a goner.

Being attached to negative be­havior is addictive to the brain. In such cases, we are predisposed to make choices based on patterns that seek out unnecessary drama. Could all of this be because you have set a pattern in your thinking that anticipates the worst?

Growing up in Appalachia, many women abided by two rules: it’s impolite to say no, and be as nice as you possibly can be, and everyone will realize you’re the better person. For me, this translated as always say yes and play nice.

Innocence is what we find within ourselves when we stop being suspicious and fearful. When we let go of our socially conditioned caution we discover we have a core of innocence and playfulness. Innocence is a state of self-love and self-acceptance that has almost nothing...

Growing older is inevitable and, as has been said, better than the alternative. Limiting ourselves by age, though, is a state of mind. But often we accept stereotypical statements about age, aging, and what is supposed to happen at certain ages. We don’t need to accept any of these thoughts!

If you find yourself time and again in relationships that make you feel unlovable, then you’re probably short on self-love. I had relationships like this. Wanting love from someone else led me to do crazy things like elope with a man I’d casually met on the beach...

The idealized self — the mask you put on for appearance’s sake — reaches the breaking point during burnout. All that work to maintain the facade, and it couldn’t even deliver the goods. You still don’t feel happy and fulfilled. As a result, the false self finally...

Are you — right now — living a life completely by your own rules? I’m not talking about your parents’ rules, your boss’s rules, or your partner’s rules... Here's how to make your own rule book so that you’re not living their lives, dreams, frustrations, and visions for you...

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration...

If we are to love humanity as a whole, we must first love humanity in a unit of one -- our own self.  I started looking at what loving someone really meant, and...

One of the qualities Buddhists strive for on the path to enlightenment is called “sameness of being.” It means being exactly who you authentically are, no matter who you are interacting with. To be your most authentic self, you must get over your habits of worrying about....

Sadness can become a very enriching experience. You have to work on it. It is easy to escape from your sadness — and all relationships ordinarily are escapes; one simply goes on avoiding it. And it is always there underneath... the current continues...

Did you ever wonder what characterizes a psychologically mature person? I’ve thought about it a lot – both on my own personal inner journey of awakening and because I work as a therapist and coach on a daily basis, helping other people with their issues. Here are some of the things I’ve discovered.

How can you free yourself from being lost in your thoughts? To understand the answer we must examine the chain reaction of thought. Every thought that passes through your mind sets the background for the next one. Your attention keeps reacting to each thought in a way that makes way for the next. For example...

You can only take care of yourself if you know yourself. You can only make good choices for yourself if you know yourself. You can only set limits if you know yourself. But to know yourself you have to be able to answer basic questions like...

Malia Obama recently announced that she will take a gap year before attending Harvard University. Historically, American high school graduates have been less likely to take a gap year as compared to their European and Australian counterparts.

I am writing about you. You; wonderfully flawed, perfectly nutty, beautiful, broken-hearted, powerful you. Would you like to impact the planet and be a part of a positive change? Would you like to feel more at peace with yourself and be a happier human being?

Every single person is different. We all have different backgrounds, views, values and interests. And yet there is one universal feeling that we all experience at every single moment...

When it comes to dealing with stress, everyone has an elemental style of dealing with it, and everyone has an ego. Our reactions are often as predictable as the sun coming up every day and going down each night. Whatever the cause -- we react.

Renewal is well described by Beat novelist and poet Jack Kerouac in his line, ‘I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.’ After a smooth transition, renewal brings a gradual sense of stability and certainty after a time of rapid change. As we step towards our dreams...

Happy February! It is the month of L-O-V-E! Which (let's be honest here) can mean you're either feelin' it or you're not. There's no in-between when we're talking about Valentine's Day, am I right?

When the six-year-old showed his drawing to the grownups in his life, instead of seeing a boa constrictor digesting an elephant, they thought it was a drawing of a hat. Whenever he showed it to adults, he received the same response. The youngster concluded that none of the grownups had any imagination at all!

As you experience being an earth angel, you will discover that the path of service is riddled with deep feelings. We are in service at all times, and we need to set an example to other earth angels. If you are living with dysfunction, and your life is not in balance, you need to seek out a teacher and heal within. We cannot serve others when we are ourselves are out of balance.

Core values are the things in our lives that we live from that are nonnegotiable. They are at the heart of who we are, and they need to resonate with our heart’s energy. If they don’t, they are not our values but belong to someone else.

What makes you break your diet, or run up your credit card, or be attracted to all the wrong people? Each of us has self-sabotaging tendencies, the origins of which elude us. Be confused no longer! I’m here to tell you that these behaviors are attributable to a part of your personality that perhaps you didn’t even know you had: your Outer Child.

Our biographies are truly ours to play with, and it is our responsibility to take care with how we do this. If, for instance, you tell yourself an old story that revolves around the notion that no matter what you do, “that’s just the way it is,” and the ending will always be the same, the universe will eventually show you exactly that.

In my years of working with clients and their karmic history, I have chosen to take the meaning of karma out of the duality, that is, the belief that doing good brings good things, doing bad brings bad things. Instead, I use a deeper spiritual meaning of karma—its role as the unresolved emotional wounds...

A website or any new profession, relationship, or step ahead in life is an excellent projective test for where your consciousness lives at the moment. Since life is more about what’s going on inside you rather than what’s going on outside, the best use of outside is to shine light on the inside, so you can progress in your soul’s journey.

In an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jane Fonda revealed that it wasn’t until after she turned sixty that she realized one of life’s most important secrets: She had to give up her incessant desire to be perfect so that she could begin to experience herself as whole.

We all carry some degree of self-blame, ways we accuse or condemn ourselves. Often these feelings come from our childhood, where we were blamed for mistakes we made. It’s sad how other people’s blame of us can turn into our blame of ourselves, which then often becomes our secret shame, and can keep us from the happiness we want...

New research suggests that focusing on the “silver linings” of our negative traits can lead to positive results. Researchers call the finding a “silver lining” theory.

Whether or not we’re part of a couple, we come into the world alone, we leave alone, and we make many of our most important decisions after we’ve done our own private soul-searching. We and we alone are responsible for our behavior; we create our own lives.

The news was beyond depressing. It was ridiculous. It was unbelievable. Finally, after the closing sortie of auto accidents and snarled traffic, the broadcaster announced, “. . .and now for a great new book by an author who is going to tell you how to live a happy life.”

Solitude is the state of being alone and away from others, without feeling any sense of regret, guilt, or loneliness. Spending time in solitude is highly self-nurturing and a practice that we all need to embrace. When we are so busy with the hectic activities of our lives...

Awareness is the beginning of healing. It is the transformation of consciousness from feeling victimized and separate to remembering that we are always connected with a higher purpose and a greater objective than simply sleep-walking...

One of the secrets of living a happy life is to become your own best friend. But you can only do this when you know who you are, when you honestly and truly know yourself. Because what does a best friend do? A best friend sees you for who you really are and unconditionally loves and supports the real you...

I have been rethinking selfishness, the ego, and self-centeredness. In some schools of thought these are dirty words, nasty attributes to be subdued, transmuted, and overcome. But maybe they're not so bad. Maybe it's all how you look at them. Baseball star Reggie Jackson said, "The only thing I don't...

When I was anorexic, surface feelings took on a villainous and critical role. I know this sounds melodramatic and unrealistic (because it is), but “feeling bloated” literally felt like the death of me. I could not separate my true self from my passing thoughts and feelings.

All my life I wondered, What is my role? I explored this both within myself and with the help of others. I began by asking myself, What can I offer to the world, given my specific skills, life experi­ences, and through the platforms that I will attain?

I realized my nagging feelings of dissatisfaction, that little dissenting voice that made me feel like I wasn't in the right place at the right time, or doing the right thing, was all a set of instructions for how to find inner peace in the presence of my emotional turmoil...

Independence allows us to choose our lives, live them however we want, decide who we marry, what kind of work we do, if we want to have children, and the religion or spiritual path we follow. Independence gives us freedom of choice. We can easily forget an equally important thing … dependence...

Joy enters my heart each time I see the world from a higher perspective than before. I can see more clearly through the eyes of my greater self. I know that finding joy is possible even in the most extreme circumstances...

There are those who think karma is about blame and punishment. This sounds like old-time religion to me -- the methods and fear-based strategies designed to control simple minds and simple hearts. Karma is not like that...

No one gets through childhood without some degree of wounding. If we stay blind to these wounds, they have a way of unconsciously ruling us. Our inner child is the full complement of childhood feelings, needs and...

Take out your journal and write the names of two women you admire. Women who for you embody the word "god­dess." For me, this first list might include Michelle Obama and Helen Mirren. If you're...

We need to acknowledge our mutual human suffering. While it is, of course, natural for human beings to talk and communicate with one another, unless we have a good excuse or reason to do so we seem to maintain our typical everyday stranger status with the entire general public surrounding us.

It is time to stop being your own worst enemy and begin to become your own best friend. As a psychotherapist, I see time and time again the adverse effects of my clients' lack of self-care. In general...

Considering the challenges facing humanity, one might wonder if it’s time to put less emphasis on activity and more emphasis on awakening. Less what and more why. The form of life is the chalice through which we drink the essence of life.

For years, I looked at myself through the prism of trying to “fix” myself. It was subtle, out of sight, like a current underneath the smooth surface of a river, but it was altering the flow of my life...

People with low self-esteem have believed the worst about themselves so strongly and for so long that they readily discard any feedback that contradicts their belief. They are unable to trust compliments and praise and often unknowingly twist such comments to mean the opposite.

As they grow older, many people constrict their boundaries; they often seek what is comfortable, familiar, and safe. Life becomes a matter of focusing on the petty rather than...

We all have times in our life where we find ourselves caught in the middle of dramas or 'impossible' situations. Our first tendency mighty be to find who's to blame and/or how to fix it. However, Alan Seale suggests: "This situation has happened for a reason. It wants to tell us something. The drama is a wake-up call..."

Beliefs, dogma, theologies — all the costumes of religion — vary dramatically through time and place. But the call to know love as the ground of our being, and to honor our gift of life through the way that we live it: this does not vary.  Seeking, yearning, tasting and transforming are certainly heart, soul and meaning of...