Okay, enough time has gone by. When I was on my European tour I actually got used to putting out a blog every day and some people got used to reading it and even liking it, and I know I’ve been sorely neglectful since I’ve returned.

So here’s the story:

I am ensconced at my family’s beach house at Nantasket Beach around Boston. I am here to write, but not to write blogs. I am here to write my new book, on which I have been working and making slow progress. I am also here without Amy, although she did visit me here for a few days and we had a spectacular time. But before, and now after we were together, I noticed a very interesting phenomenon. This circumstance is the exact opposite of what I experienced on my European tour. There, I was surrounded by people—wonderful people—almost constantly. I was met in every port. For the most part I stayed in their houses; they were so gracious. I loved it. During that time I found myself in an amped-up state a lot of the time. I love that kind of interaction with great people who kept changing, and kept me on the run. But it was also exhausting.

Now, at Nantasket Beach, where I know no one (except to say hi to a few neighbors) I am now totally alone. At first I had to get used to and push through the thought-created notion of loneliness. It’s funny to me, that we can be with someone and go away from them and be alone for a week or even a month, and not experience loneliness. But loneliness is one possibility. Yet, without the thought of loneliness, being alone—that is, not being with anybody—is simply a neutral fact. Loneliness has a longing and some pain attached to it. “Alone” is a neutral phenomenon.

The first day I got here I felt simply alone. The second and third days I felt loneliness. I had nobody to share this experience with. The fourth and fifth days I was simply alone again without the not so nice feeling of loneliness. In the sixth and seventh days I dropped into a state of solitude. It was such a peaceful state. I loved it.

Loneliness, alone or solitude

The same phenomena— not being with anybody— can produce loneliness, alone, or solitude. But it’s not the phenomena that does it. As we know, thought is what does it.

I want to write out of peaceful solitude.

Of course, then I went back home to be with Amy for almost a week, and then she came down here to be with me for a few days, and after she left I felt loneliness again. This time, after one day it turned back into alone. And this morning, walking/running on the beach early at very low tide it was so gorgeous that I quickly dropped into a state of peaceful solitude. I have equal opportunity to create any of those states for myself, and no doubt many others.

What I do know is the closer I come to peaceful solitude, the closer to my true essence, my true nature, I am and feel.

And I need that state of being to write well. It is very difficult for me to write a good book. It is not so hard to write a book. A lot of people can write books. They can write them in a very short time. But to write a really good book is difficult, at least for me. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of intention. It takes allowing it to creatively flow when I feel it, and then it takes a great deal of craftsmanship to rewrite when I don’t feel it. How it will end up coming out is anybody’s guess right now. But I am hopeful, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

At the end of this week I will be doing a training in Maryland for a group of (mostly) Haitians. I’m really looking forward to it. One of them, Arielle, the person who arranged for me to do this, has a dream to go back to Haiti and begin a Modello-like project in her original home country. What could be better than that!

I’d also like to alert anyone interested that I am giving a webinar for the 3PGC this Thursday, July 17 at 12:00 noon, US Eastern time. The session is titled, Our Cutting Edge. I did a similar session for Michael Neill’s Super Coach Academy recently, but because I rely so much on questions from whomever is listening, it is bound to come out differently.

Last thing for now: I was happy to be part of Steve Light’s brainchild of having a bunch of Three Principles’ authors make available their books on Kindle for either free or a much-reduced price, over the July 4 weekend. I am happy to report that as a result of just my participation in this, 190 Modello, 245 Parenting from the Heart and 327 Somebody Should Have Told Us! were sold. I was very happy to make that contribution, and I would especially like to thank my publisher, CCB Publishing, for being so willing to participate.

I will have something else to report within a couple of weeks. Stay tuned.