November/December 2008 Spirituality
The Lessons of Solitude

by Kim Corbin

Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia's coastal wilderness with equipment and supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind, and to find the spiritual answers he'd been seeking all his life.

Q. What led you to spend a year alone in the wilderness?

A. I've always spent time alone in nature. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on a rock one hot dusty morning watching the clouds and buzzards drift across the southern California sky. There was tension in my family, and between us and our neighbors, so perhaps I disappeared into the woods and pastures seeking peace and a place where I could be myself. I doubt, though, that I knew then why I went. I still doubt I really know why I go. I can give plausible reasons, but finally I just feel from time to time, a mysterious urge to leave society behind. I saw people only once during the year when a national parks ranger dropped by to see my camp.

Q. What were the most difficult psychological and physical aspects of your year alone?

A. Deep solitude can be psychologically and spiritually challenging. There were few easy escapes and I had to face dark aspects of myself. Without social engagement to modulate them, my emotional cycles were sometimes extreme. Fear and rage were very strong at times. I did experience loneliness, but in general this wasn't a particularly difficult aspect of the year.

The climate was very intense with seemingly endless wind and rain storms, especially during the first months I was there. I've never been in such a windy locale. I was frequently cold, and at times the ocean froze.

Only a few weeks into the retreat, a ferocious storm raged in from an unprotected direction and flipped my inflatable boat. Both of the outboards were drowned in salt water. This was a very low point as I imagined myself stuck for a year with no boat to bring in firewood to heat the cabin and no way to go fishing for food. I managed to repair both engines, but they were never completely reliable after that and I always felt somewhat anxious when far from camp.

After I'd been in solitude for eight months I finally traveled to a distant glacier I wanted to visit. The 170-mile journey was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Not the trip itself, but facing the fear and uncertainty beforehand. One of the challenges of solitude is that potential or imagined danger can loom to fill the mind. Without other people to help maintain perspective, fear that would normally be manageable can overwhelm.

Over and over, I imagined myself caught in a savage storm and huddled for days on a wind-whipped, spray-soaked rock or as a small vulnerable speck lost and alone - drifting helplessly with a dead motor among an endless labyrinth of mountains, islands and waterways.

Q. What did you do out there all by yourself?

A. Sometimes time stretched on forever, usually when there was physical, emotional or spiritual pain, otherwise the days drifted easily by. There was always plenty to do to keep me busy: cutting firewood, fishing, building or repairing something, photography, writing, thinking. The challenge was to refrain from busywork and remain still to allow an opportunity for insight and healing. As the months passed, I spent more and more time in meditation. Simple tasks also became forms of moving meditation. I definitely got bored dealing with the same old repetitive neurotic crap, and I was frequently afraid. One of my intentions in going was to surrender control and become part of the flow of the universe. The difficulty was often my ego's resistance to letting go of the need for control.

I'm not sure I did keep from going crazy. The line between craziness (not psychosis) and eccentricity is a fine one. Living alone in the wilderness demands the ability to survive physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with minimal external support. Such independence is sometimes frightening, but trusting and relying on oneself is also deeply rewarding. The ability to build a shelter, stay warm and dry, obtain and prepare food, repair clothing and damaged equipment, maintain personal health, and use a map to navigate on land or water are all necessary physical skills.

It is also vital to have the psychospiritual tools and experience to deal with the mental effects of long solitude. There are various ways to do this, but most fundamental is the capacity to experience with equanimity (or to ignore) whatever arises in the mind.

Q. What did you learn?

A. Living alone for a year in the wilderness and writing about the experience has brought the realization that more and more I know less and less. I've found no sure answers - at least not the kind I went looking for - and because of this I sometimes feel bereft, as though I've failed in my quest. When caught in such doubt, I long for and question why others have found certainty when I have not. But when I relax into trust, I remember that certainty is a conceptual illusion. In life, there are no sure answers to find.

Q. You discovered a relationship with the wind and rain?

A. My relationship with the wind and rain changed during the year. In the beginning I felt the wind to be a threat and an adversary that often prevented me from doing what I wanted to do. Sometimes I sensed active malevolence rather than simple implacability, and fear filled my solitary mind. When I began to dis-identify with my own desires and fears, I could engage more openly with the wind and allow it to shape me in unexpected ways. Slowly the wind became a teacher, and instead of cursing it I bowed in respect. It is sometimes said that when the student is ready the teacher appears. It seems more likely that we are always in the presence of teachers, and at different stages in our development we become open to their teachings.

Eventually, watching seagulls and condors soaring in the wind, I realized I wanted to play there, too. I decided to build a kite. It was something my father had taught me when I was just a young boy. I tied the kite to my fishing rod and let out hundreds of yards of line. The kite swooped and soared in the gusting wind and felt like a huge fish fighting for its freedom. It was as though I was sky fishing for the wind with the kite as my lure: the ultimate in catch and release.

The wind taught me to surrender, but the rain taught me to love. In the beginning the rain was an annoyance, but over the months I spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours listening to it patter on the porch roof and splash in the puddles. That and other water sounds deepened my concentration and carried me inward. There was often bliss as I simply sat and listened. I learned that love is as fundamental as awareness, an open heart as vital as an open mind. Without love, clarity is not enough. I learned that relationship is always possible in any circumstance and never possible to avoid. I can change the quality of my relationships, but without engagement I cease to exist.

Q. How do you open yourself to the unknown?

A. One powerful aspect of solitude is that in the absence of social engagement the mind may more easily open and become still. It's from this place of stillness and clarity that we can directly experience the numinous presence that is often obscured in the business of our daily lives. There were times when the mysterious presence was strong for me and I felt profound joy and wonder in simply being, and also times when I felt cut off and desolated.

Opening to the unknown requires trust and courage because the ego usually resists surrendering personal autonomy. Beforehand, it feels like death, even though we are simply allowing ourselves to consciously experience what is always the case: we are part of something greater than our small self. I tried over and over to control this shift in consciousness, but it always came as a gift.

A Zen aphorism says, "Enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice can only make us accident prone." We have many ways to hold on and many ways to talk about it, but basically we're either holding on or letting go. Doubt, hate, certainty are ways of holding tight. Faith, love, wonder are open and loose. Yet aimless drifting can bring suffering, too. The trick is to be open without clinging to the looseness.

There are so many ways to think about and describe our encounter with the sacred. What enormous suffering and destruction we have wrought by mistaking our descriptions for what they describe and by becoming slaves to the dogma we ourselves have created. Instead of seeking common ground in the sacredness of all life, we often demand compliance, and condemn apparent difference.

Q. Can you distinguish between solitude and isolation?

A. Although many cultures have long recognized solitude as an opportunity to look inward, in our culture we sometimes think that spending time alone is unhealthy. Some psychologists even argue that since we're social beings, meaning is found only through relationship with other people. But we are more profoundly relational than that. To be fully human we need relationships with other people, with the nonhuman world and with our own inner depths. In solitude we have the opportunity to explore all these domains of relationship. We are also spiritual beings and may feel called into solitude to seek communion with a numinous presence we can directly experience, but not clearly define.

Solitude offers an opportunity to explore the sense of alienation many of us live with and to realize that being alone is not the same as feeling isolated or lonely. I've learned that the core of my loneliness is not separation from other people, but feeling disconnected from myself. Solitude provides a respite from the demands of social life and creates a space for personal healing. Paradoxically, spending time alone softens my sense of alienation and deepens my relationships with others.

Learn more about Robert Kull, author of Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes, at www.bobkull.org.