Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.
– Aristotle
We’ve just wrapped up 2021, which for me personally was my year of self-imposed solitude. Bizarrely, after the collective restrictions to our individuals freedoms, imposed by the spread of the Covid-pandemic in 2020, once the vaccine appeared and the personal freedom to move has been somewhat re-stimulated, I chose to go deeper with-in rather than explore with-out. It felt natural & instinctive to make such a choice, like yawning or stretching. And I don’t regret it at all.
In the early part of 2021 I moved into a new flat, in the city center of Bucharest and spent my birthday and all significant holidays by myself. I was alone for Easter, for Halloween, for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It could’ve been the influence of the astrological transits which I was experiencing (both Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius were transiting my 4th house, which is traditionally the most private and intimate point in a person’s birth-chart). So going within and keeping solo felt like the most normal thing to do under such an energetic influence. I slept a lot, I cried a lot, I journaled, I read, I took many long walks, I listened to music and I prayed. However, I do need to explain that I was placed in a rather privileged position: my business was doing well and it allowed me to live like this, and that for most of my life I had travelled, so the fear of missing out was completely dissolved in my case. I was actually looking forward to standing still for once.
I left my parents’ home and the country I grew up in, when I was 20 years old. And up until the moment I turned 33 in 2020, I did not stop moving. Travelling either for love, work or study, I kept going and exploring and expanding. Blame it on my natal Sagittarian Moon, Saturn and Uranus placements, which I associate with an unconscious thirst for adventure and feeling the pressure to emotionally nourish myself by seeking my own freedom in unexpected global places. When I travelled, I felt alive, vital and dynamic. A fire was burning within me, each time I jumped on a train, bus or plane. It was risky, as many dangers could have come about. I felt like I tempted fate and fate never disappointed me; it sheltered me and showed me the world was beautiful and safe to discover. I felt accepted and loved by an invisible force, as I underwent a lot of karmic tests. The moment I arrived someplace completely new and strange, it was an indescribable feeling which gradually became mildly addicting. I always felt connected to the Divine when I was wandering around the world, whether I was getting a higher degree, learning German, visiting my friends, holidaying in the South of France or conducting research in the USA. And by contrast, as if to test myself but also because I was following the limiting conditions of the Zeitgeist, in 2021 I made the conscious choice to stop moving. I didn’t know at the time that I was searching for the Divine within, when I made the decision to stand still. I just felt tired and in need of deep rest.
As I stopped chasing, adventuring, and escaping from my feelings on some level, all of this experience I had gathered but did not have the time to reflect upon, suddenly washed over me. Like a giant wave I was surfing upon which splashed me down the moment I paused and became aware of it. See the thing is, I was gathering all these life experiences but there was never enough time to process them on an emotional level, and thereby turn knowledge into wisdom. As a consequence, I only had knowledge at hand but I remained emotionally immature, afraid of being alone, thrill-seeking and unaware of my co-dependencies. Deciding to be alone was then a moment of deep courage to face everything I was not dealing with. So I returned home and I decided to grow on a deeper level than before, at a root-level. I am grateful I took this time away from the beautiful distractions of the world and from other people, even though I need to admit it hasn’t been easy. Sitting with my feelings has been difficult in 2021, as well as truly carving out a space to be alone. In this process, I paradoxically discovered that being alone is an illusion.
The more I kept saying ‘no’ the more life kept cropping up at the personal boundaries I had established, by bringing me in touch with people that wanted to give to me, to know me and to enjoy me. So I had to resist and kept affirming my ‘no’s. I just couldn’t give off my energy so freely as I could in the past, because something extraordinary happened during this solitary time: my creativity exploded! I poured all of the energy that I would have otherwise given to other people into my creative work and I started developing my business, The Spiritual Social. I enjoyed this process so much that nothing else appeared to matter, as I allowed myself to exist in the creative flow and imagine, divinate, interpret and make use of all the skills I had acquired throughout my life and silently dismissed as ‘hobbies’. These hobbies were actually my true, authentic Self expressing itself. The more I grew The Spiritual Social, the more it became a mirror, reflecting back to me who I really was. In turn, other beautiful souls noticed this and decided to join this authentic space I created for myself and others, in the process of fully accepting who I was. Again, in a paradoxical stroke of good fortune, the more I went within and focused on being my authentic Self and expressing this creatively, the less alone I found myself to be.
The monotony and silence of a quiet life, stimulate the creative mind.
– Albert Einstein
So what you could take from this post and my shared experience is that: a) major transits to your 4th house will require you to go within, to seek solitude and nurture privacy in your home – you will need to deal with your emotions to make the most of such a transit (whether it is a Saturn, Uranus, Pluto or Jupiter one); b) the more time you spend standing still and feeling your emotions the more you will heal and awaken to your innate creativity, so time alone is never ‘wasted time’; c) you will discover that the more you seek solitude, the more impossible it will become to create it – you awaken to the richness of your inner world and will attract solitude’s counterpart, connection. I assume this happens because once you transformed a core ‘need’ into ‘a desire’ then you have empowered yourself, because a desire can be fulfilled more consciously than a compulsive need.
As this process takes place and you start to sensitize more to the events in your life – because they happen more slowly or less frequently than before. As you allow yourself to be sensitive and intuitive, co-dependencies can be more easily dissolved through attentive self-observation. I believe that slowing down is good for your humane sensitivity and mental health. Solitude is deeply healing for a broken heart and replenishing in terms of your identity, if you forgot who you are and what your purpose in life is. You become empowered in solitude and thereby more magnetic, attractive and authentically pure. I learned in 2021 that there is nothing more irresistible than being your Self, as I spent a lot of time by mySelf. To truly get to know someone/something you need to spend time with it, focusing on it and valuing it. And now, I am excited to witness in 2022 in which direction my Self will grow and how this will bring me closer together to members of my soul family.
With universal love,
Lexi
spiritualsocial.wordpress.com 