(Photo by Microsoft Clipart) ~~ These are two very different subjects yet somewhat related in the sense of our needs and awareness.

I thought about this when I read a passage from Kent Nerburn’s book entitled Simple Truths (pg. 57) where he says:

“Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union.”

It’s true. You can be in a crowded room and feel isolated, cut off, alone. Yet, you can be miles from civilization on a mountain top with only the trees, sky and wind as your companions and feel as if you’re one with all of life.

Why is that? How can we have such contrasting states of being? It’s not just different people experiencing solitude or loneliness but this contrast can appear within us at different times of our lives. What are we focusing on that gives us such peace or turmoil?

When we feel the world is unfair and not providing what we want, we put ourselves in a state of isolation and loneliness. It is not that the world is necessarily being unfair but it is that our understanding is only centered on self and we get fearful or uncomfortable when it’s not going our way. We are focusing only on the external and if it satisfies our needs or not. We want people, things, to fulfill us and they can’t. They aren’t designed to fulfill that longing and desire deep within.

On the other hand, solitude is the surrendering of self allowing the fullness of life to flow and be experienced. It is in this state where we find peace and fulfillment unlike anything a temporary external form could provide. It is in this peaceful place of the ebb and flow of life where we operate in handling the noise and endless chatter.

You don’t have to go to a mountain top to find solitude. We take it with us where ever we go – it is within us. There will always be countless errands to run and endless labors of life long after we’re gone. Accept the rhythms of life and when you need to take the time breathe in and feel peace and solitude right there with you – never to leave – and you won’t feel lonely.

As Nerburn goes onto say:

“Though this may sound mystical and abstract, the universe has an eternal hum that runs beyond our individual birth and death. It is a hum that is hard to hear through the louder and closer noise of our daily lives. .. It makes us part of something larger. In solitude alone do we become part of this great eternal sound.”

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(Photos are from Microsoft Clipart) ~~ As I sit here in thought on what words to write I stop and listen. The night is winding down and the sounds of the house are beginning to quiet. The thoughts I have are of how my day went and of gratitude. Allow me to share a few of them with you in no particular order.

THANK YOU FOR…
1. the sounds of our grandfather clock
ticking the minutes and hours away so faithfully
2. the beauty of a spring snowfall – 10 inches by us – covering the trees and mountains and putting out the fires that were so devastating
3. listening to my 2-yr old grandson giggle and laugh on the phone tonight
4. family and loved ones to enjoy and love and grow old with
5. pets as companions feeling their warmth and acceptance without having to say a word
6. my little car and how it got me through the snow yesterday
7. my day job (which I really like) to meet the necessities life requires
8. the silence – peace – joy – happiness

9. to be alive – feel my heart beating and breathe in and out – one breath at a time
10. for my Guides giving me a nudge that I had dropped my driver’s license and to go back and look for it; it was there in the parking lot – I found it – thank you, thank you
11. being in love with my life-long partner of 41 years

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I’ve been thinking about this all day. It’s a question all of us ask at least once in our lifetime. I think I got a little closer to the answer from listening to a story Oprah told on her webcast last night with Eckhart Tolle.

She said she remembered being in Hawaii and going for a walk with a friend late in the day. They walked to a top of the mountain and the clouds came down and were all around them. Up in the sky they could see the sliver of the moon but at ground level were the clouds. As she told it, there was such a presence of stillness. It was so still and quiet that she held her breath because the sound of breathing would break the silence.

I could picture that. It’s as if in this place all time and all thought stops. Tolle says it’s at this place where everything is connected and one and it’s the place of the essence of who I am…who you are.

I guess you could say there really are no words that could describe who we are without putting labels on it. The who I am is not of form. Form is for labels or for the roles we play and conditioned thoughts we think but the who we are is not touched by any of that.

Have you ever been that still or experienced that type of silence? What does it feel like to you? If you’re meditating and you’re in that stillness before you know it an hour has slipped by or if something breaks that silence you feel as if you’ve just awakened from a deep sleep.

Feeling our Beingness as we do in this space is what Tolle is talking about in this webcast and his book. If we can learn to go about our daily lives aware of our essence doing the things we need to do and going places we need to go, we would find solutions beyond our imagination and energies flowing into the work we do.

Because we would be putting our focus on our essence, who we are, the challenges we face would still be there but not attaching itself and creating drama and stress. When we’re aware of our essence in the midst of these problems and difficulties we detach and step back and observe them. The physical and mental part does what it needs to do to address the situation but it’s not running the show. Through the awareness is where the answers come and when we allow that to flow into the situation a divine energy joins with us with encouragement and love.

I have listened to words like this and read many books over the years teaching many things on this topic and told myself I understood but I don’t think I really knew. I learned the spiritual concept of these words but am now beginning to know who I am. You start by discovering who you are NOT and in the midst of that the real you appears. It’s not something you can express with thoughts or words – it’s the stillness, the silence and essence of our existence.

“The gift you offer another person is just your being.” — Ram Dass

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I have read others’ posts on what they’ve been learning from Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)(Paperback), and I can truly resonate with what they’re learning about the many faces of ego and how it operates in our lives. What I’m realizing is that this is serious and is not to be taken lightly. It’s not just a course to take or another book to read and for many it won’t make sense.

Patricia Singleton of Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker talks about her shyness. I too was shy and withdrawn and my husband also has helped me. Not only was I shy but what was worse is that I constantly cut myself down and he stopped me and pointed out the positive things. What I’m learning now that is so powerful for me is the thoughts, the roles, are not who I am….they are not who you are. It’s part of a conditioning thought process we bought into with the roles we continue to play over and over again identifying with them believing this is Pat or this is you. As Patricia quoted in her post from Tolle’s book (page 86):

“Shyness often goes with a self-concept that is predominately negative, the belief of being inadequate. Any conceptual sense of self – seeing myself as this or that – is ego, whether predominately positive (I am the greatest) or negative (I am no good).”
Suzie Cheel over at Abundance Highway talks about recognizing her pain body and beginning to understand how it affects others. To be fully present is the beginning of the awareness of how ego runs our lives and what it does. They’re typical things, really, and reactions to what others do that trigger the thoughts and we’re off again onto another drama. Sometimes, it’s not pretty.

Being Aware,
Being Focused,
Being Still,
Being Present
I must admit. This has not been an easy teleclass for me to follow. The book resonated with me from the moment I first picked it up but I’ve had a hard time reading it. Distractions and thoughts race through my head so much so that I sometimes have to read a paragraph 3 times. It’s because I’ve conditioned myself that way when I am resisting something. I’d rather detour and do something else for awhile rather than get at the task at hand. See, I’m beginning to awaken…a little at a time – just by seeing this.

Just tonight, I realized in talking to my husband that my thoughts are running on autopilot all the time and I don’t listen fully. I get a piece of what is said and hold that thought that when the conversation is over I’ve missed most of it. This may sound silly to you but when you’re in a conversation you want to feel like you’ve been heard. I know I do but I have to listen first, give my attention and be fully present to who is talking not to the voice in my head. This is the awareness part – the being in the present moment – and it takes practice, at the very least alerted, like I was tonight, that this is what is happening.

My heart is excited and knows the importance of the message of this book and what it holds for me. I feel the truth of the words and the hope of what my world could be like if I could but only allow myself to be still and become aware – not doing, just allowing. We are allowing our essence to come forth and be a presence in our life.

I’ve had a lot of spiritual experiences over the years through which I have learned a great deal and am grateful and humbled at the patience of our Creator. Now, I feel as if all those things I have learned and worked on my whole life have come together again in this one book – this one teaching, as if I’m revisiting them again. Perhaps, what I learned before was more intellectual rather than a touch from the heart, I don’t know.

I only feel, at this juncture, there is something powerful going on here and I believe those who are reading and participating feel it too. For some, it may open like a flower and flow like a stream, easily and fluidly; for others, like myself, it’s like chipping away at a sculpture and allowing the “who I am” come forth as it is designed to do.

We can all learn from each other and awaken to our life’s purpose. As Marianne Williamson said in A Return to Love:

“You’re a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

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(Photos by Microsoft Clipart) ~~ How many of you have walked along a path in the park or through the woods and felt the energy of nature. The aliveness of life is fresh and soothing as you hear the birds singing and smell the earth as you put one foot in front of the other. And then…there are the trees standing tall with light streaming down through their branches.

I love trees no matter what size, no matter what type. It always gives me a twinge whenever I hear someone having to clear their land and cut down trees. A part of me aches for the trees. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they are rooted and cannot run for their lives.

I read this beautiful little book by Kent Nerburn called, Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life. In it he talks about making friends with trees no matter where he lives. He finds we have so much in common with them. Here is what he says,

“They have their feet on the ground, their heads in the sky. They respond to the movement of the wind, the changes of the season. They have moods, aridities, joys. They like company.

In their scale they are perhaps our most intimate companions; their lives are understandable in years, not aeons; their size in feet, not miles. We can watch them grow, give forth their fruit, send forth their young. We can touch them without feeling alien, or as if we are violating their wildness. We sense their private courage.”

I’m a tree hugger. I remember one time, when I was working as a loan officer for mortgages, I would walk around my neighborhood getting to know my neighbors and leaving a door hanger with a little gift and postcard soliciting my services. I called it my walk-abouts. Because we live in the mountains you don’t see all the homes tucked away down a lonesome lane or up a long, wooded driveway passing by in a car as you do when you’re on foot.

So, I picked this asphalt driveway. It looked nice with an open gate and a stone entryway. I started walking, and then hiked as this driveway turned into a road and took many twists and turns taking me up higher through trees and rock outcroppings. I had walked in almost a mile when the road opened up to valleys all around and more trees and I could see below to the highway. It was beautiful but I was wondering where this road was leading me.

As I continued walking, I came upon this strangely shaped tree just off the asphalt. It almost looked like an adult pine tree shaped similar to a bonsai and, as I approached, it seemed to call to me. I stood and admired it and it communed with me without words. I put my arms around it and hugged it and felt its strength and “private courage” as Kent Nerburn said in the passage above.

I continued on and at the end the road turned into a circle drive with a beautiful log home rising up like The Ponderosa with its separate mother-in-law home to the side and an outdoor, colored rubber basketball court against the huge outcroppings. I thought I’d come upon a mansion. No one was home and their Rottweiler guard dog was a little suspicious of me.

I left my door hanger while keeping an eye on their dog and made my way back down the road happy with my adventure and over taken with the majestic beauty before my eyes. I greeted the uniquely shaped tree in passing on my way down and thanked it for the energy it shared with me that day.

I’d often contemplated what they might have thought, if they had security cameras, seeing this “crazy” lady walking up their road, hugging a tree, talking to their dog and leaving a door hanger. Not long after that I no longer worked in the mortgage industry and they closed their gates and I honored that. What a shame that door closed.

At least I know of a beautiful home not far from mine that is embraced with a curiously wonderful tree that I might have an occasion to see again on some other opportunity, perhaps on another adventure.

If you get a chance – hug a tree. You might be surprised by their warmth and energy and willingness to commune and share secrets – captured by their private courage.

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