The solitary person is in a negative space. He is feeling lonely, he is hankering for the other. He is in a deep sadness because he does not know how to be with himself, he does not know how to enjoy himself, he does not know how to celebrate himself. All that he knows is relationship, so whenever he is in relationship he feels at ease. Whenever he is with somebody he can forget himself. To be with somebody is something like alcohol, it is an intoxicant. It is simply drowning yourself, your worries, anxieties, your very existence in the other. And the other is doing the same with you. That's what people call relationship. Each is using the other as a means to avoid himself.

Solitude is totally different. It is not loneliness, it is aloneness. It is aloneness. It is not negative, it is utterly positive. It is not the experience that the other is absent but the experience that 'I am present.' It is so overwhelming an experience of one's own presence that everything else fades from the ind and one starts feeling ecstatic. The sheer joy of breathing, the sheer joy of being, the sheer joy of participating in existence is enough. It is a wonder to be, the wonder of wonders.

Bliss makes real solitude. Then solitude becomes a temple, bliss becomes the deity in it. And that's what meditation is all about: the art of changing loneliness into aloneness, the alchemy of changing solitariness into solitude.

~~Osho ♥ ♥