The Art of Being Alone ~ Part 1 ~ Master Do Nothing
In the past 30 months — I have had no job. Yet it’s been the hardest work of my life. And thanks to The Art of Being Alone — it’s been the most rewarding.
But traveling the world is not all ‘gram glory.
Sometimes — I am downright lonely. On dark nights, with soul crushing loneliness and uncertainty — I have simply collapsed to the floor in tears of despair. No one to hold. No ideology to grasp. Alone with the mind, sometimes the heart can drown in loneliness.
Yet — even with my pity party of tears — I cherish the power of being alone. The power to ponder. The world shattering insights that magically flash — all by ‘Doing Nothing’.
Navigating this chasm — of being alone and loneliness — is what I not so creatively call: The Art of Being Alone.
In Part 1, I will share how we are losing our secret weapon of creativity. In part 2, how my lonely journey led to a counterintuitive slapped in the face.
So I ask you this. Do you want to lose your secret weapon of creativity? If so, stop reading. If not — let's explore the highs of Einstein Doing Nothing, to the perils found in my own ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
But as we shall see, the spiritual loneliness that ached my heart — is not the one you would ever guess...
LAZY Einstein Doing Nothing
During my backpacking shenanigans, I have spent 8 months on silent Vipassana meditation retreats. 12 hour days alone meditating and deconstructing the processes of mind and body.
It has been nourishing — yet daunting.
Mind blowing — yet mind fucking.
This quality time alone, both on the cushion and on the road, has gifted me a spaciousness of heart and mind that reshaped not only me, but also how I perceive — and thus experience — every moment of this pale blue dot. (I know, I am kinda a big deal)
By breaking the habit loops, the autopilot blur, the media’s “breaking news”, and the incessant nagging pull of society’s “priorities” — I could perceive my signal in the noise. I can give a fuck about what I give a fuck about. I can be — with my being.
Ohhs she is still one hell of a work in progress and a hot mess, but instead of drowning in shit, I am kinda hanging onto a branch on the river bank.
This time alone has gifted me a spaciousness of heart and mind — a prism that both nourishes and creates.
But we don’t have to be dirty naval gazing hippies like me to unleash it. Just ask Einstein and his Nobel Laureate time alone!
Exploring the rabit hole of time — Einstein was stuck. According to Einstein “ I was exhausted, defeated, and would give up the entire quest". His creativity had crashed into a WTF brick wall.
Despaired and downtrodden, he rode home on a street car a broken man. No podcast. No texting. No gramming.
However, when he got home an image came crashing in. It was a visual thought experiment, (a scenario of light from the square’s tower trying catch the car he just rode home on).
And that’s how his Nobel winning idea cracked the code - by giving up - by Doing Nothing. And from that spaciousness of Doing Nothing (followed by 2 weeks of mathematical proofing) the Theory of General Relativity — and an icon — were born.
Ok, we aren’t Einstein. But hopefully your snowflake Ego knows that by now. But this Einstein approach of letting go and Doing nothing, is basically the methodology of Creativity Theory in action.
Contemplate the problem, put it on the shelf, let the unconscious plug away until a spontaneous flash of creativity gifts you the ingenious idea of say the squatty potty (highly underrated!).
But all this mind magic requires space — bandwidth in consciousness. Time for the muses of the underworld to meander. For ‘God’ to spin serendipity. For the unconscious to compute and process.
98% of thoughts are below the threshold of consciousness. So if we allow it time to roam, our unconscious will work overtime for us — for free.
Unfortunately, we are so busy being busy, we smother our connection to ourselves. For we are always on. Always doing something. Yes, we Netflix and chill, but how often do we chill with the moment? Let our thoughts marinade in space and time with nothing to do?
We are afraid to be alone. Scared to be bored. Addicted to more. For something is always playing, pinging, clicking, scrolling, or streaming. What if Einstein was just gramming — instead of daydreaming?
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
We are losing our creative superpower. It’s the great theft (and asset monetization) of our lifetime — our hijacked attention.
Currently our spaciousness of mind is being raped, hacked and manipulated by the smartest brains and algorithms on the planet. This attention capatilism is just the way earning reports of tech giants want it:
We look at devices for 400 min/day — but what about our hearts?
We know all the world’s news — but do we know (and see) the miraje in each of our own egoic minds?
Now a days we think too much — yet contemplate very little. Even with my Vipassana superpowers, YouYube sarinades my laziness like a siren — which is why I have to play defense (thank you Digital Wellbeing + Quality Time app).
So instead of doing more, what if like Einstein, we need to practice doing nothing?
DO NOTHING — GAIN MORE
The paradox is this: in being alone — and doing nothing — we can GAIN MORE...
More peace. More wisdom. More ideas. More well being. More of life’s juicy wet moments (yea that’s a thing).
A space and perspective emerges on our lives. Call it beginner’s mind or a reorientation of our consciouss experience, but instead of drowning in thoughts and mentall fabricated concepts about reality, we can surf and flow with our awareness to process more of direct reality.
This sounds like woo woo be in the moment bullshit, but go on 14 day retreat and get back to me first. And no — your selfie “meditating” in LuLu lemon on IG doesn’t count (sorry if that’s too harsh, my judgmental shadows sometimes spaz — but I just dont get these staged meditating selfies- but hell maybe these rants are just a fancy form of that..hmmm)
With spaciousness of mental attention, we can evolve and grow our relationship to ourselves and the world. We can smell the roses and the rotten garbage of our psyches. All of this makes us better friends, lovers and strangers.
Duude: I GOT SHIT TO DO
This jobless vagabond is not arguing for us to be Big Lebowski’s roaming in robes doing nothing duuuuude.
But in world of do do do, more more more, we need a whole lot more of nothing nothing nothing. There’s a reason the best ideas emerge while doing nothing but scrubbing our asses in the shower — and not on the corporate whiteboard (and dopamine and alpha brain waves).
I love podcasts (46 on my homescreen!), but sometimes I say this is time fucking out walk. Practicing doing nothing is a craft —a skill we need to cultivate. An addiction loop we need to snap.
We — not tech giants — need to defend our spaciousness. The first step of addiction, is realizing you’re fucking addicted.
So go for a walk phone and media free. Enjoy a bubble bath without YouTube (keep your wine). Relish the mountains without 37 photo snaps. Hell daydream and mind wander. And do that silent meditation retreat you have been fantasizing about (yea I am talking to you Ganesh!)
But as you unleash the power of being alone, you may worry, won’t all that time alone make me feel lonely?
Maybe.
And this is where my lonelely sob story kicks in. As I started to taste more and more of the fruit of being alone — digging deeper and deeeper into the mind — eventually loneliness kicked me in the nuts.
So in part 2, we explore my lesson and warning. A loneliness that you would never guess.
Part II ~ A Lonely Seeker’s Tale (Coming Next Week)
Let me know what you liked, what could be improved and how you manage the Art of Being Alone in the comments below ~ ALF