Solitude, Stillness and Silence

An Interview by Diane Covington, The Sun Magazine, April 2007
"The Unseen Life that Dreams Us" with John O'Donohue on the "Secret Landscapes of Imagination and Spirit"

Covington: Solitude seems central to your work. Why is it so necessary?

O’Donohue: Solitude is the sense of space as nourishing. What usually happens with solitude is that people equate it with loneliness, which frightens them. But I don’t know anyone who has a good friendship or love relationship in which there are not long periods of solitude. There is a way in which we treat our relationships almost like a colonial expedition: we want to colonize the space, all the territory in between, until there is no wilderness left. Most couples who have deadened in each other’s presence have colonized their space this way. They have domesticated each other beyond recognition. Sometimes you see a beautiful woman who quickens your heart. Then you meet her again years later, and she has become a domesticated relic of who she once was, and you think... Where is the dangerous vision that I saw in her? The same happens to men.

I think it is more interesting to be with somebody who still has his or her wilderness territory — and by that I don’t mean bleak, burned-out, damaged areas where wounding has occurred; rather, I mean genuine wilderness. Upon seeing that in the other person, you promise yourself: One thing I will never do is try to domesticate her wilderness. Because the authenticity of her difference and the purity of her danger and the depth of her affection are all being secretly nourished by that wilderness, as all of my spirit is being nourished by my own wilderness. There is a great tradition in the U.S., even more so than in other countries, of the solitary person going out into the wild. It’s a shame that this model is not now being revived for the voyage into our inner wilderness.

Covington: Stillness and silence are natural companions to solitude.

O’Donohue: Yes, all three are necessary for a mystical life, a harmonious life. Stillness is just being still. There is no great mystery about it. Your body is an object in space — not an inanimate object, but an object nonetheless. I will be putting my body-object into a tin machine on Tuesday and flying over the ocean. My body will emerge all shaky on the other end, and it will take time for it to recover its native tranquillity. Spending time being still is a simple and modest requirement that we face each day, not just when traveling. If you could sit still for twenty minutes every day — just sit in your chair and look at a place on the rug — your body would love you for it. Your body loves the simple relief of stillness. And it’s great for your health.

The third thing is silence. When someone is talking, try to listen to the silence between the words. This is what a good therapist does. She is listening for what your words are saying, and she is also listening between the words for the things that your unconscious wants to say, but which your conscious mind does not know about or is not yet ready to make heard. To be a great listener is to be a listener on that level.

Silence depends on stillness and solitude. If you do not have solitude and know what wilderness is, and you do not have stillness and know what tranquillity is, then you are not able to listen with that sort of refinement and subtlety. Bring a rhythm to your life that has a share of solitude, stillness, and silence in it, and you will gradually come home. That is what spirituality is: the art of homecoming.