There is no true solitude except interior solitude: 'The truest solitude is not something outside you, not an absence of men or of sound around you: it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.' (Merton, Seeds of Contemplation) The person who has discovered that solitude and been discovered by it, is always solitary, that is, he is always alone with God, even in the midst of a crowd and the rush of a city. Place and circumstance are less important to the person who dwells in peace at the center of his being. It is, however, difficult to imagine how a man could develop a deep interior solitude without a certain amount of stepping back from the crowd in order to glimpse its illusions and diversions, and without some silent time in which to get in touch with himself.
"Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. When the inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his own inner self, his life is always miserable and exhausting. For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul.
Richard Anthony Cashen, Solitude in the Thought of Thomas Merton quoting Merton, The Silent Life
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