5 - The Spiritual Practice of Solitude and the Search for the Soul

The Spiritual Practice of Solitude and the Search for the Soul 

Consider how we seek an object that we have misplaced. We look and look but cannot see. We search and search but cannot find. We know it is right in front of our eyes but cannot locate it. Initially we frantically run hither and thither. We ask friends to help us look. They ask what they are looking for, and we are able to describe its color, shape, size, utility, and so on. When we are searching for some familiar object that we have lost, someone will suggest a method. “When do you remember last seeing it? Where did you last have it?” Finally, a memory surfaces, and we go directly to the spot and there it is. 

Unfortunately, the method doesn’t work that well in the search for one’s soul. We cannot describe its color, shape, size, or utility. It is precious, but all we can do is say what it is not or perhaps describe it using metaphors like “a pearl of infinite worth”. If someone asks us “where did you last see your soul”, we are at a loss. It has been so long since we “held” our soul, or even thought about our soul, that we have not the slightest vestige of memory about where we last had it. It’s there, all right, but we don’t know where. 

We must develop a different spiritual practice or method in our search for the soul. For if we cannot describe it, and have no memory of having it, then we must rely on the soul finding us because the soul knows exactly who we are. There are three basic spiritual practices of solitude. 

Humility … the soul will reveal itself if we just wait expectantly and patiently. 

It is difficult to admit helplessness when all our lives we have striven to be in control. In the same way, it is difficult to deny oneself and step back when all our lives we have striven to affirm ourselves and step forward. Or to think of yourself as a “nobody” when all our lives we have yearned to be “somebody”. The ego must get out of the way. This is difficult to do, because in the very act of deciding we are a “nobody” we have demonstrated that we are “somebody”. It is quintessentially egoistic for the ego to deny itself. 

The soul is that which is other than the ego. It’s power is greater than the ego, but backwards to the ego. What the ancients called the “via negativa”, or the path of self-negation, doesn’t make sense because the soul discovers us in a non-sensical way. This is why part of spiritual discipline of solitude is a cessation of senses or at least a cessation of the habit of self-gratification. I am not suggesting whipping oneself with cords (although symbolic acts of suicide have sometimes been a part of this discipline). This is the rationale for fasting, long-distance running, and other feats of endurance. And it is the rationale for sitting in absolute silence under the banyan tree and losing all contact with the physical world. It is a process of waiting patiently for the soul to reveal itself … or to say that another way, for the object of your search to find you instead, because in fact it is not the object that is lost, but you yourself. 

For me, humility is an experience most poignantly in the early morning and early evening when civilization seems most distant, background noise is eliminated, and beauty is most vivid. It is the moments of first wakefulness, when the conscious mind has yet to assert control over the unconscious, when the poetry happens, and strange ideas emerge. And I am learning (slowly) how that “Kairos” moment can be sustained in spite “Chronos” passage of time. In the evening humility is experienced most poignantly after the physical labor of the day is over and I can slowly walk through my gardens and see even the most minute signs of birth, growth, maturity, and death and so lose myself in the mysterious order of the universe. 

Labor … the soul will reveal itself if we stop fretting and put ourselves to work. 

The second spiritual practice of solitude is labor, but which I mean physical labor. Manual work forces you to forget yourself in simultaneous concentration and repetition. The harder the better. The more aches and pains the better. The dirtier the better. This is not the labor of love, but rather than love of labor for its own sake. 

The goal of labor is productivity. So many people today are forced to do meaningless work, which means that it is essentially unproductive. It creates nothing substantial or worthwhile. True labor is meaningful even if it is menial when it contributes to the wellbeing of society. Indeed, much of the work professional management is meaningless in that sense (even though much better paid, physically easier, and much cleaner). True labor reduces stress. It does not exponentially magnify stress. It calms. It does not excite. True labor does not require great emotional energy. Its essential goodness is never ambiguous. It is in labor that the soul finds you because, unlike other forms of employment, one is not distracted by politics. 

For me, the love of labor is best experienced in my garden or in my workshop or in my studio. It is there that I feel the purest joy, which is to say, joy that is not tainted by the fear of failure and unworried by the opinions of others. It is non-competitive. It’s not about winning or losing. It is about being joined to the material at hand and striving to approximate perfection. 

Study … the soul will reveal itself as we concentrate on learning the right things. 

The third spiritual practice of solitude is study, by which I mean learning to live well. Much of what we call study is continuing education (by which we advance our careers or increase our incomes). This latter kind of study is a good thing also, but it is usually pursued as a duty and something we must force ourselves to accomplish. The opposite of continuing education is play. Learning to live well, however, is a different kind of desire. It is an opportunity. We make time for it. It feeds the soul and not the bank account. It is not aimed at the acquisition of things, but enlightenment as to the meaning and purpose of life. The opposite of learning to live well is not play. Indeed, play can be a method to learn how to live well for adults as well as for children. Learning is an act of openness to the mystery of truth. The opposite of learning, therefore, is prejudice, bias, and bigotry. 

The love of learning has eroded over the last sixty years or so as the liberal arts declined in favor of professional training. Learning involves local and world history, visual art and music, literature and writing, philosophy and religion, languages and cultures, pure or theoretical sciences.  The civil rights movement, for example, was born out of the study of liberal arts. Prejudice resurged as education focused increasingly on business training and applied sciences. 

Learning is whatever study helps you explore, understand, and imitate what is essentially good, beautiful, and true. That may be reading books, or it may be playing video games. Of course, there are good and bad books just as there are good and bad video games. And of course, a bad book may prove to be beneficial later and a bad video game might turn out to be uncomfortably profound. Learning is, after all, an adventure and one never really knows what will happen as a result. And that is precisely why it helps you search for the soul, because through learning the soul finds you. 

For me, the most adventurous learning comes through reading (especially philosophy, history and historical fiction, and biography) and visual art (especially painting, portraiture, photography, and urban art like sculpture or graffiti). I tend to write in the morning or the middle of the night. Increasingly I find that I grow more through observation and dialogue with wise people, or questing people, or different kinds of people, while avoiding chatting, twittering, surfing, or shopping.