#2

So it came to be …

So it came to be that I retreated into the comfort of solitude. After I had cut myself out of one body, I found that there were many others from which I needed to be removed. I preferred the removals to be performed surgically, without too much fuss, and no lengthy or dramatic exchanges over the departure. Best to leave it unmentioned and unacknowledged. Leave it to time to allow the new state of affairs to find an equilibrium; one that was not awkward despite an obvious absence from inclusion in the affairs of everyday life.

And so my territory of interactions receded in a way that felt normal, because time allowed for a suspension of sorts, one that allowed me to feel as though I was still connected, even though I had retreated from regular interaction. Only after enough time had passed, did I begin to realise that my escape was complete, and that I required an escape from it in turn. For existing on an island secures one from the world, but not from oneself.  One thrives in solitude only if one makes a currency of it that serves to strengthen the self.

Previously there had been no centre that could fall apart, or inward upon itself. It was distributed, propped up in the sphere of life by the interconnections and inter-relations it enjoyed. It permeated every facet of existence, every dimension of everyday life. It was at the centre of much more than the self. It was a locus of a greater span of interactions.

Now, however, the dissolution of the self, which had once been complete, had been undone. And the inimitable self quickly became my obsession again, as it introverted and turned inwards upon me. It was self-reinforcing, and quickly captured my thoughts. I found myself lost in the sheer noise of the self. At times it felt as though the noise vibrated throughout the entirety of my body and mind, and consumed me wholly.

All virtues became hypocrisies once the noise of the mind began its hum. Tumbling through the multiple dimensions of the mind, as one discovers in deep solitude, I saw virtues and evils clash up against their asymptotes, and collapse into infinite variation. All absolutes were lost in the noise of the mind, even when clarity on the pervasiveness of duality was absent. The noisy hum held within it an elixir that when first ingested brought forth agony. This agony was the path to insight. The elixir only illuminated what was already there, waiting to be discovered.

Once there was only the self to occupy, then the centre, it seemed, was at its most vulnerable. While solitude was a refuge from the vagaries of human society, it was not an escape. All hypocrisies are inescapable in solitude, lest solitude lead to a madness that holds contradictions constantly in play, the contradictions that feed a tortured soul.

In the depths of solitude, however, when I had let go of everything, I discovered a silence. In this silence I learnt that there is a proximity between solitude and death. Solitude is a means of preparation for death, for to seek solitude is to seek comfort with death, or rather, the deep individuation of death, which must inevitably be faced alone.

To turn inwards towards death prematurely seemed a waste of the liberty afforded by the present. But I had paid a great price for the insights of solitude, so I guarded it jealously. It was a product of pain, and all such products become irrevocably part of oneself, to be guarded along with the rest of what makes up the self. It mattered little that it had once hurt. It mattered more that it had now become part of me. It had set, and like concrete, would require great effort to disjoin.

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