XXIII – Happy Isolation

The company of others is, most of the time, nothing but restlessness, noise, troubles revolving around mutual loneliness.
To constantly search for what is called stimulation, is to be afraid of being in the presence of yourself.
It is, in reality, to take flight morally.
How can you confuse joy with being constantly mixed-up in the tumultuous crowd?
Why should one absolutely have to be swallowed up among other beings to believe oneself happy?
One is then only in contact with the tree-bark of others, one enjoys only their artificial or superficial attitudes.
This can obviously give distraction, temporary pleasure, a kind of breath of wind or fresh air.
But what a gulf between this shallow “pleasure” and the deep,
essential joy of conversation with yourself, the analysis of one’s own intimate thoughts and one’s most secret sensitivity!
There we see everything; we go to the source of everything.
To deny the power, the magnitude of this true joy, is to deny the whole inner life.
Loneliness is a wonderful opportunity for the soul to get to know itself, to keep watch, to learn.
Only empty heads or fickle hearts are afraid of remaining silent in front of themselves.
It is at such times that we see if our feelings are solid or if they were nothing but noise.
High feelings can live alone, without physical presence; on the contrary, isolation purifies and grows them.
The joy, the joy that spreads like a block of granite under the water of flowing life, the one that never gives up and which never disappoints, lies in the inner struggle, in the inner exaltation: to watch over oneself, to dominate oneself, to purify oneself, to rise, to have the courage to think.
Because it is so simple to be lazy or cowardly in the face of spiritual work!
Have the energy to expand your hidden world! To love intensely,
that is to say, to give oneself silently, without reluctance!
We prefer to forget or deny that these fundamental joys exist, to be satisfied with immediate enjoyments that we believe to be superior to everything, and after which we have nothing, very often,
if not dust in the heart and a wilting of the wings.
The mystics have long known this constant animation of the interior life.
Were they less happy, did they have less joy than we who chatter,
mingled with faces where we only discover appearances, fed by words that die with the echo?
The joy of the mystics is just one example.
The same inner joy exists at other stages of spirituality and sensitivity.
The presence of others is not even essential at all.
One can perfectly love, be possessed by the highest joys of the heart, in physical distance and even in death.
As long as we have not once freed ourselves from external elements, as long as we have not been able to live alone, that is to say in the most real company, that nothing can disturb, we have not yet reached the very threshold of joy.
Instead of complaining about loneliness, you have to bless it, you have to take advantage of this unexpected possibility of examining yourself in silence and dominating yourself lucidly, completely,
even in your most contradictory thoughts.
Doors closed to the world? Willful termination of contact with the outside?
So much the better!
Because it means, if you like: doors open to the soul, exact contact with one's self; exhilarating joys of knowledge, spiritual fulfillment and, mystically, the most delicate and complete gift.