The very thoughts that allow us to hurt another limit our ability to express the will of creation through ourselves. At the same time, each time we love another, we have just loved ourselves. Each time we create time for another, strive to understand another, we have just done each of these things for ourselves. When we disapprove of the actions, choices or beliefs of others, we witness through them those portions of ourselves that ask for a greater healing.
There is great value to be realized in periods of solitude and silence for those whose lives are in and of the world. Although I had gone into solitude for four days every year over the past twenty years, I needed a more sustained period of aloneness to recover the freshness of my spirit and to see that which was not true. "Nowhere to go, nothing to do" — these were the words that informed my days.