{"id":898,"date":"2025-08-10T22:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T22:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2025-08-10T23:10:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T23:10:22","slug":"inner-solitude-a-doorway-to-being-in-touch-with-everything-quoting-jeanne-de-salzmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/inner-solitude-a-doorway-to-being-in-touch-with-everything-quoting-jeanne-de-salzmann\/","title":{"rendered":"Inner Solitude: a doorway to being in touch with Everything – Quoting Jeanne de Salzmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is the ordinary ‘I’, our false self-hood, and there is the real ‘I’…Strangely, silence can communicate powerfully…<\/strong><\/p>\n

From Jeanne de Salzmann’s book THE REALITY OF BEING: <\/p>\n

“Our ordinary ‘I’ thirsts for continuity. Our mind is never still. We dare not remain without thinking, without doing something, face to face with emptiness–a terrifying solitude…Our lives are a continuity of the known…not daring to approach the unknown. But the known cannot enter into contact with the unknown, and a thinking based on what we know cannot commune with the unknown. We must die to the known in order for the unknown to be revealed…I will truly meet the real only when I understand the functioning of my ordinary ‘I’ and its constant desire to perpetuate itself…In order to know myself, I need to see with clarity, tirelessly, the movements of my ordinary ‘I’. The way to this knowledge is arduous, but it brings incomparable joy and silence…<\/p>\n

“The [ordinary’ ‘I’ rises ceaselessly and always falls, constantly pursuing something, winning and losing. But it is always frustrated. It always wants more, and its desires are contradictory…” This process is witnessed in a state of conscious detachment<\/strong>. “…There must be neither a subject nor an objectof experience. Then there is a direct relation. And it is this direct relation that gives rise to understanding… <\/p>\n

“A moment comes when I experience a feeling of total solitude, when I no longer know how to relate to what surrounds me. Everywhere, always, I feel alone. Even when I am with close friends or my family, I am alone. I do not know my relations with them, what actually connects us…I need to live with this solitude and, passing through it like a door,<\/em> come to something much greater: a deeper state of total ‘abandonment’, a state of ‘individuation’. Only in this state can we find the real. <\/p>\n

“…To live silence, to know what is<\/em>, I need to come to the sensation of a void, empty of all my imaginary projections…I do not seek–as I always do–to fill the void. I feel I am this void…Feeling myself as an observation post that sees only emptiness, I seek silence…My ordinary ‘I’ submits and my mind is freer in an attitude that transcends thoughts and words…a feeling of truly entering another world, a world that seems more real. I am a particle of a greater reality. I experience solitude not because something is missing but because there is everything–everything is here.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/the-reality-of-being-the-fourth-way-of-gurdjieff-jeanne-de-salzmann\/3cdfc86cf415b23f?ean=9780834822856&next=t&digital=t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feeling myself as an observation post that sees only emptiness, I seek silence…My ordinary ‘I’ submits and my mind is freer in an attitude that transcends thoughts and words…a feeling of truly entering another world, a world that seems more real. I am a particle of a greater reality. I experience solitude not because something is missing but because there is everything–everything is here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,25,27],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gurdjieff","tag-jeanne-de-salzmann","tag-spiritual-awakening"],"yoast_head":"\nInner Solitude: a doorway to being in touch with Everything - Quoting Jeanne de Salzmann - John Shirley Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/inner-solitude-a-doorway-to-being-in-touch-with-everything-quoting-jeanne-de-salzmann\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inner Solitude: a doorway to being in touch with Everything - Quoting Jeanne de Salzmann - John Shirley Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Feeling myself as an observation post that sees only emptiness, I seek silence...My ordinary 'I' submits and my mind is freer in an attitude that transcends thoughts and words...a feeling of truly entering another world, a world that seems more real. 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