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BYWAYS TO BLESSEDNESS 59

Such self-abnegation can only be begun, pursued, and completed in solitude. A man cannot
gather together and concentrate his spiritual forces while he is engaged in spending those forces
in worldly activities, and although after power is attained the balance of forces can be maintained
under all circumstances, even in the midst of the antagonistic throng, such power is only secured
after many years of frequent and habitual solitude.
Man’s true Home is in the Great Silence — this is the source of all that is real and abiding
within him; his present nature, however, is dual, and outer activities are necessary. Neither entire
solitude nor entire action is the true life in the world, but that is the true life which gathers, in
solitude, strength and wisdom to rightly perform the activities of life; and as a man returns to his
home in the evening, weary with labour, for that sweet rest and refreshment which will prepare
him for another day’s toil, so must he would not break down in the labour of life come away form

the noise and toil of the world’s great workshop and rest for brief periods in his abiding Home in
the Silence. He who does this, spending some portion of each day in sacred and purposeful
solitude, will become strong and useful and blessed.
Solitude is for the strong, or for those who are ready to become strong. When a man is
becoming great, he becomes solitary. He goes in solitude to seek, and that which he seeks, he finds,
for there is a Way to all knowledge, all wisdom, all truth, all power. And the Way is for ever open,
but it lies through soundless solitudes and the unexplored silences of man’s being.