The way toward individuality is deceptively simple. When suffering is felt, it is time to move, to do something. Moving means moving out of the fixed patterns of habit. ...It is quite possible to feel joy while finding that the outer life is in many ways more difficult, more trying than was lived before. The bodily sensation that tells us that we are at least moving toward the sense of individuality is joy. Nothing given from the outside can bring joy; it may bring pleasure, but not joy. We are always surprised by joy because this is living from the time current from the future and there are no concepts for joy.
To move toward the desert where interior prayer and interior transformation can take place means a willingness to go into the desert, to learn to shut the door, and to move into the necessary solitude which prayer and the deeper levels of worship require.