True solitude is a participation in the solitariness of God - Who is in all things.

"Unfortunately, even in solitude, though I try not to (and sometimes claim not to), I still depend too much, emotionally, on being accepted and approved.

Solitude - when you get saturated with silence and landscape . . . How much of this is simply restoration of one's normal human balance?  Like waking up, like convalescence after an illness.  My life here in solitude is most real because it is most simple.

True solitude is a participation in the solitariness of God - Who is in all things.

All my desires draw me more and more in a direction: to be little, to be nothing, . . . to be glad that I am not worthy of attention, that I am of no account in the universe.  This is the only liberation, the only way to solitude.  As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I be a saint, a contemplative?  As long as I continue to bother about myself, what happiness is possible in life?  For the self I bother about doesn't really exist and never will and never did, except in my own imagination.  

The day goes by in prayer.  This solitude confirms my call to solitude.  The more I am in it, the more I love it. One day it will possess me entirely and no one will ever see me again. 

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers.  The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them.  It is pure affection, and filled with reverence for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say . . .  Solitude means withdrawal from an artificial and fictional level of being which people have fabricated . . . But by that very fact the solitary finds himself on the level of a more perfect spiritual society . . .  

Solitude that is just solitude and nothing else (i.e., excludes everything else but solitude) is worthless.  True solitude embraces everything, for it is the fullness of love that rejects nothing and no one, and is open to All in All.  

In the last analysis, what I am looking for in solitude is not . . . "my own" salvation, but the salvation of everybody.  

The idea of solitude includes living for others; the dissolution of the self in 'belonging to everyone' and regarding everyone's suffering as one's own." 

Thomas Merton

Photo: A lone pine snag overlooks Lumpy Ridge, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; December 7, 2012