At some point, I wrote a couple of posts about the choreographer Twyla Tharp and her book "The Creative Habit" - a book that I recently found from my heaps of books in search of the title of a headline.
The headline is about one of Tharp's exercises in the book: "Build up your tolerance for solitude" - to build an ability of tolerance towards being alone. You simply have to sit alone in a room and let your mind fly. Initially for one minute; later on you can expand to ten minutes after which you can begin to focus on whether an idea or goal is formed in your thoughts - otherwise you have to icrease the time used. The exercise is called "ciúnas gan uaigneas" - it is Gaelic for "silence without loneliness" - without loneliness, because the idea you breed will be your companion. As Tharp states, this is the exact opposite of meditation - you should not try to empty your mind, on the contrary, you should attempt to lure thoughts from the subconscious in order to befriend them and stay with them.
I have never really been able to understand the concept of meditation - so I was very happy when I found ciúnas gan uaigneas. I should set aside more time for this purpose...
(Translated from Stilhed uden ensomhed, originally published January 16, 2013)