Solitude Reflection

Solitude Reflection

by Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

How can you love someone honestly if you have not stood in the mirror and faced the parts of yourself you've long disowned? The truth is, love demands truth. Not just truth with others, but truth with yourself. And that kind of truth raw, trembling, and naked can only be met in solitude. In the quiet, when the world no longer demands your performance and you are left alone with your unfiltered soul, you begin to see clearly. You begin to integrate. You begin to forgive. You begin to remember that you are not your wounds, not your past, not your failures. You are the one who sees them all. You are the witness. The eternal awareness that was here before the pain and will be here long after the healing. This awareness is subtle. It does not announce itself. It waits for your surrender.

And when you finally stop fighting the moment when you no longer resist your own company it rises, quiet and expansive, like a gentle sunrise over an ancient sea. That is the beginning of real love: not the romanticized fantasy but the spiritual surrender that lets you behold yourself through the eyes of the Creator. There is a reason every mystic has wandered into the desert, into the forest, into the cave. Not to escape the world, but to peel away its illusions. Not to become holy, but to become real. To feel the weight of silence pressing against their skin until they realize that what they feared as emptiness was actually divine presence waiting to be known.

Solitude is not an absence. It is a sacred fullness a wellspring of insight, of clarity, of communion. It is the place where The Creator speaks, not in thunder, but in stillness. And it is there, in that holy stillness, that I meet Him. In the absence of noise, the voice of the soul rises. It does not come with fire or fury. It does not come to prove itself. It simply is. And for the first time, you feel that being is enough. You do not need to do. You do not need to perform. You are allowed to simply exist. And that existence is holy.

But solitude is not always gentle. As you dive deeper, you will meet shadows. You will confront the memories you buried, the emotions you numbed, the desires you denied. And this is where many turn back. They say, "I am too broken. I cannot handle this. I don't want to feel this much." But these are the growing pains of returning to yourself. Healing is not always light. Sometimes it is a deep and necessary darkness, a reckoning, a dismantling of everything false so that what is real may finally emerge. The sacred will not share a room with pretense. It will wait patiently until you are ready to remove the mask.

Let me say this from the deepest place within me: in my solitude, I go into a cave with a tea light. My cave is writing. My pen is my lantern. My words are prayers, climbing their way up to heaven. Writing is more than expression it is exhale. It is my mountain, my desert, my sanctuary. It is where I retreat when life storms against me. It is where I lay my burdens down and sit in silence with the only One who understands. My writing is my cave. It's my place of communion. It's my safe haven when the winds howl and the waves rise.

To the untrained eyes and cold hearts, it may seem as if I'm antisocial, timid, soft, shy, boring not aggressive and uninterested in communication. But O', how deeply mistaken they are. What they fail to understand is that I am in communion with the Eternal. I am sitting in divine council. I am weeping and laughing and growing in the sacred arms of silence. What they cannot see is the battle being won in stillness, the truth being unearthed in my quiet, and the healing that blooms with every stroke of my pen.

One of the reasons I gave up all social media platforms eight years ago was because I heard the Creator whisper, "Come away from the noise." And I listened. I didn’t just log off I left. I left a world of distraction and artificial connection. I left because my soul was drowning in the static. I left because comparison was choking my joy. I left because performance had taken the place of presence. The Creator pulled me away its not to isolate me, but to insulate me in divine peace. To purify my inner world. To sanctify my time and space.

And like all those called by Spirit, I followed the sacred tradition of departure. Just like Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive not just tablets, but transformation. Just like Muhammad retreated to Mount Hira to hear the voice of revelation in the quiet of night. Just like Abraham stood on Mount Moriah in test and surrender. Just like Hajar, running in desperation between Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, chasing water not just for survival, but for faith I too had to walk away, to climb, to run, to weep. My journey is not lesser because it was not loud. My journey is holy because it was honest.

And I remember my grandmother her voice like a song of old wisdom saying, "Real love doesn’t shatter under pressure. Real love the God-love, the love a mother has for her child that is the kind of love we should receive and give." It is unbreakable. It is unconditional. It is uncomfortable. It stretches and bends and returns stronger. It has plasticity. It does not retreat in the face of difficulty. It does not ignore or disrespect. It does not ask you to disregard yourself.

That is the love the Creator has for us beyond belief. And because we are created in His image and likeness, we are to radiate that same divine frequency of love. A love that does not flinch at wounds. A love that says, "Even in your brokenness, I see your holiness." A love that we are meant to embody, not just receive. A love that wraps itself around the abandoned, the angry, the ashamed, and says, “Still, you are mine.”

This is the journey. This is the walk of the soul: to strip away the noise, to confront the shadows, to let love reintroduce itself not the digital mimicry of connection, but the kind that shows up in silence, in stillness, in sacred remembering. Love that whispers, “You are not alone,” when the whole world is quiet. Love that steadies your trembling hands as you write your pain onto the page. Love that says, “Even now, you are worthy.”

Solitude, silence, surrender. These are not voids. They are vessels. They are the places where the sacred speaks, where the false dies, and where the real is finally born. They are the rhythm of my breath, the ink of my soul, the home where my Creator dwells within me.

Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar