Solitary Work That Cannot Be Done Alone
Another reason why we need each other
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash
During Covid, I remember going on a walk with a friend. We were both lamenting our business struggles, and she said confidently and in good faith, “We’re all in this together.”
I didn’t buy it. I told her so.
My dad had just died. We had to close our business with no idea when we could reopen. I didn’t feel like I was “in this” with anyone (except maybe Ernie). I felt isolated, overwhelmed, and the stress of it all activated my go-to stress response - retreat.
It wasn’t until years later, five, to be exact, that I began to understand both the truth in what she said and the truth of my own pattern. She was right: we are all in this together. But this socially blind (well, socially near-sighted) woman had to do some serious solitary work to discover that and to challenge the reflex to retreat.
The Year That Changed Me
My year in Conscious Living required real commitment:
a daily practice (that 7-minute practice I can’t stop talking about),
weekly homework,
biweekly small-group meetings,
and large-group gatherings every other week.
No easy feat. And as a good student, I was all in.
On the last day of class, I couldn’t keep it together. I cried through the entire final meeting. It felt like a chapter was closing, the learning, the groups, the teachers, all of it ending at once. And I’ve never been someone who deals well with endings.
But now I understand why: chapters usually involve relationships, and when a chapter ends, it can feel like the floor drops out. My shadow pattern of retreat, conserving my energy and resources, kicks in hard. I become blind to the next set of possibilities, to the next chapter waiting for me. I feel like I’m suddenly on an island, completely misunderstood. (This is part of my shadow work, too.)
And here’s the crazy part: I didn’t know any of this until I started doing the Work.
And I didn’t truly understand the importance of belonging to a larger whole until the very end of the course.
So What is the Work?
You’ll hear me talk about the Work often. What do I mean by it?
I mean the deep dive into ourselves, the slow unraveling of every patterned, nuanced, conditioned reaction we carry. But the Work isn’t linear. It’s a threefold process:
We learn we have an ego
(Yes, all of us. We’re built that way.)We learn what that ego is made of
(Our shadows, instincts, defenses, patterns — all the stuff we’d rather not see.)We learn to transcend our egoic constructs through presence
(Three centered presence so we can live in awareness.)
It sounds simple, but it’s not as easy as 1-2-3.
The Work is daily.
It’s gritty.
It’s humbling.
It’s liberating.
It asks us to show up with honesty and openness, again and again, so that something new can arrive in us.
Why We Can’t Do This Alone
George Gurdjieff, the Greek-Armenian mystic who developed The Fourth Way, taught that real awakening happens in life, not hidden away in a monastery. But he also taught something essential:
The Work must be done individually —
but it cannot be done without guidance, teachers, or a group.
I get that. Now.
I needed the guidance of my teachers and my group to see what needed to be seen.
I still do.
As much as I thought I knew myself, I wasn’t even close to understanding the depth of my go-to reactions and behaviors. One of my teachers said something I will never forget:
“Once you see the unseen, you cannot unsee it.”
She was right.
As I continue to participate in our group conversations, I see myself more clearly, and I see others more clearly, too. It creates compassion, connection, and a deeper understanding of the human suffering we all carry. When we witness one another, we support one another.
And that is the point.
The Solitary Work That Cannot Be Done Alone
If you want to dive deeper into your own patterning, if you want to see what’s been hiding in plain sight, I invite you to join my Meet Your Inner Guide workshop on December 6th at 10:00 AM EST.
In just an hour, you’ll experience how AI can act as a gentle, honest reflection tool, a companion for the solitary part of the Work.
Because we truly cannot do this work alone.
And yet…
we must be willing to do the solitary part of it.
Come check it out.
You’ll be so grateful you did.
Regarding the topic of the article, it's so true. I feel this with Pilates. It's so personal, you're so in your head. Yet, the energy of a class makes all the difference. How does that synergy even work? It's fasinating how we need both.