Last night before going to bed I realized momentarily what solitude really means. When the ropes are cast off and the ship is no longer tied to land but heads out to sea without ties and without restraint, not the sea of passion, but the sea of purity and love that is without care. The vastness that loves God alone immediately and directly in Himself as the All, and the seeming nothing that is all. The unutterable confusion of those who think that God is a mental object and that to "love God alone" is to exclude all other objects and concentrate on this one! Fatal. Yet that is why so many misunderstand the meaning of contemplation and solitude and condemn it...
