I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange — that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here ...
To respond authentically to what we encounter: this is how we all reacted as children, before we were punished or shamed for doing so. To respond authentically to what we encounter -- how hard it is for adults to do something that sounds so simple.
To do so, we only have to be inwardly attentive, we only have to know what we feel, we only have to be able to respond with an innocent, spontaneous, instinctive receptivity that is a finely attuned discriminating consciousness, a body and soul reaction to the world around us.