4 Natural Sanctuaries that heal the mind: Silence, Solitude, Stillness, and Simplicity
Cambridge Dictionary defines sanctuary as a place of protection or safety, especially for someone or something that is being chased or hunted.
We need a sanctuary because we, too, are being hunted.
Hunted for our attention.
Attention has become the currency of the modern world, and countless industries compete to acquire it. They do so by glamorizing pleasure, promoting instant gratification, and constantly offering dopamine-driven rewards that keep us hooked.
In a world designed to capture and consume our attention, sanctuary is no longer a luxury—it is a necessity.
Because pleasure brings revenue, it is promoted, romanticised, and seen as superior.
Unknowingly, we have become prey to pleasures that are merely distractions and temptations in disguise.
Pleasure is highlighted as joy.
The more the world grabs our attention, the more lucrative the sources of pleasure become.
And this is more of business and less of fulfillment.
Real joy is waiting for us in a safe space where temptations don’t reach, where distractions don’t interfere, where dopamine does not control.
But because the world is hunting us, trying to disrupt these safe spaces by making pleasure the real buzz, we feel caught and enslaved.
We have slowly turned into well-fed slaves who no longer seek freedom and real joy.
This is the power of the world, selling us what profits it, even if it is detrimental.
Can we blame the world?
Not really.
When the world becomes the hunter, we need to guard ourselves.
All we can do is to stop falling for its trap and build clarity and awareness.
The world does not force us into pleasure and all sorts of distractions; it simply promotes them.
It gives us an easier and faster option to forget stress, tension and anxiety. But such pleasures do not mend or heal our inner world; they only serve as short-term escapes.
The more we engage with them, the more we delay reaching our real sanctuary.
Let the world hunt. Let the world romanticise pleasure.
Let’s not counter what the world is marketing; instead, let’s become aware of what will consume us and what will set us free.
It is not by tearing apart the pleasure-built systems that captivate millions that we will find our true joy. It is by not letting these systems control our minds and enslave us to short-term pleasure, and instead choosing the path that leads to our real-life sanctuaries.
Only when we understand what these sanctuaries offer, and how they transform us, will we choose to walk toward them, even if the path is long.
Before we head toward our sanctuary, we must develop a deep longing for it, a longing that arises only when we recognize that what it offers is priceless and precious.
We cannot truly marvel at these sanctuaries until we realize that the pleasures marketed by the world are perishing, and that true joy has been waiting elsewhere all along.
There are countless ways to seek pleasure, only to find it dropping in the next moment, whereas with just 4 life sanctuaries, we can have perpetual joy that no pleasure can provide.
Silence
In response to a challenging event or a situation, our thoughts start to scare us.
They flood in and disturb our peace. Because we don’t yet understand the new place we have suddenly stepped into, our thoughts get jumbled up. They feel threatened and lose their ability to process and frame clarity.
When we face something uncomfortable for the first time, our thoughts are not trained to guide us through it; instead, they boggle us. Events are inevitable; we cannot control what is happening to us. Our power lies in how we respond to it. But because in the face of something we haven’t dealt with before, we fail to respond with clarity. We feel worked up by it because we’re not able to understand and navigate it.
When such disturbing events knock, what we need the most is awareness. And awareness needs space to build, the space that is clouded by thoughts running without our permission.
To navigate a situation that is difficult, before we need refined and constructive thoughts, we need emptiness where no thoughts come and go. In this space where no thoughts run, slowly builds into silence.
Silence is when you don’t participate with your mind. This is when the mind regains its ability to think from a place of awareness and consciousness.
Silence removes noise and allows clarity to set in. Just like a glass of muddy water slowly begins to settle the dust at the bottom and we can see the clear water above.
Those running thoughts are like mud; they create illusion. And silence is the water, that brings truth and clarity.
Silence is the place of power because it is where the Divine speaks to you and gives you the clarity you need to make your way through the noise.
So, Silence isn’t empty, it is full of answers.
As Rumi says, silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
Solitude
When you love someone’s company, it is because they offer you something so beautiful that it fills you with happiness. This means only when the companionship feels soothing and peaceful, you love being part of it. There is a subtle joy in that association that brings your best side out, helps you grow and evolve.
This is exactly what happens when you turn your alone time into solitude.
Solitude is when you offer yourself something so meaningful and thoughtful that it paints the relationship you have with yourself in the most beautiful ways.
Solitude is about disconnecting in order to better connect with yourself. It allows you to reflect while others are reacting.
As Voltaire said, “the happiest of all lives is a busy solitude”.
What he meant by this is, a person who has found something incredibly beautiful to immerse in when alone is the happiest of all lives.
Just like you love other’s company when it feels beautiful, you can only create magic in the company of yourself when you have something beautiful to offer.
The idea is to understand that unless we create something meaningful and fulfilling when we are with ourselves, we cannot really love our company.
Solitude is not just being alone, it is offering something to yourself in that alone time, something that makes the time you spend with yourself enriching. This is when your company alone is called solitude.
And in return, solitude not only creates a treasurable life but also turns you into the most desirable person anyone could long for.
Solitude offers patience, understanding and gratitude.
Solitude is a gift for those who romanticise a love relationship because only one who has found joy in one’s own company can fill joy in the company of another.
Stillness
I just finished Ryan Holiday’s “Stillness is the Key”, and it took me into a beautiful world of stillness.
As per this book, Stillness means to be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude-exterior and interior-on command.
Stillness isn’t the quiet, the inner calm when everything around is silent and peaceful. It is when despite the chaos and noise, our inner peace is undisturbed.
When adversity, difficulty, and the noise surround you, but you still find the serenity to think clearly, that is when you have found stillness.
Ryan mentions in his book how Seneca, Rome’s most influential power broker and wisest philosopher, struggled to work.
There was noise coming from the streets, there were crises upon crises, there was a threat to his finances, and there was old age he could feel in his bones. It was, all in all, an imperfect environment for a human to get anything done.
Seneca said, “I have toughened my nerves against all that sort of thing. I force my mind to concentrate and keep it from straying to things outside itself.”
If a person could develop peace within themselves, if they could achieve apatheia, then the whole world would be at war, and they could still think well, work well, and be well.
Apatheia in Stoic philosophy refers to a controlled emotional state where one experiences appropriate emotions without being overwhelmed by them.
Seneca wrote, “You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it is flattery or a threat or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning sin.”
Stillness is the biggest key to producing great work and living a happy life.
To have achieved stillness means to have become master of one’s own life. To survive and thrive no matter what the environment.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke described it as, “full, complete” where all the random and approximate were muted.
The book tells us that while we naturally possess stillness, accessing it is not easy. One must really listen to hear it speaking to us. And answering the call requires stamina and mastery. To hold the mind still is an enormous discipline.
To achieve stillness, we need to focus on three domains:
Mind: the head
Body: the flesh
Soul: the heart
A present mind, a healthy body and a healed soul is where stillness breathes in. Stillness is about focusing on each of these domains and cultivating them into their better states.
When it comes to Mind, the work lies in fortifying it from distractions and external noise.
Ryan says, “Knowing what not to think about, what to ignore and not to do. It’s your first and most important job.”
To become empty is to become one with the Divine-this is the way. ~Awa Kenzo
When it comes to the body, the work lies in not taking it for granted. To refrain from temptations that can derail the body.
And when it comes to the soul, the work lies in participating in healing the inner child.
Ryan says, “It’s a dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect your wounded inner child. The insecure lens. The anxious lens. The persecuted lens. The “prove them all wrong” lens. These adaptations, developed early on to make sense of the world, don’t make our lives easier. On the contrary, they keep making us weaker from the inside.
It will take patience and empathy and real self-love to heal the wounds in your life.
To heal your soul is to break the chain called samsara as per Buddhists, the continuation of life’s suffering from generation to generation.
To become still is a continuous work on the mind, body and soul.
The world will give us every reason to go out of order; stillness is about not letting it. To become so concerned about the inner calm that anything outside aiming to collapse it has to face your conviction to preserve it.
Simplicity
Attention determines what part of your life is upgrading. If your attention is more on the lifestyle, chances are, you might neglect upgrading your life.
Simplicity is not about downgrading your lifestyle; it is about not letting your attention be consumed by it.
It is a mental state more than it is a physical status.
When your mind is unattached to the material you have, you are living a simple life.
Someone living a simple life isn’t about living minimally, it is about not letting the grandeur control you.
When you embody simplicity, your lifestyle does not become dimmer nor does it lose its color and vibrancy, it simply sets you free.
When you choose simplicity, you turn into a bird that is never bound to the cage of worldly joy, it rests in it but never in its bondage.
A simple life is our natural state. We move further away from this state when our attention starts to divert. When our attention is on what we have than on who we are, we lose simplicity.
The loss of simplicity is not loud. It compounds over time and in its absence, we have a lot around us but we become absent in it.
Simplicity is the real luxury because in it your presence is the biggest.
