It happened when I had my own place again. And depending on how you count, you could say it was actually the very first time that I had my own place.
Just for me.

The lease was temporary, but it was with a real building cooperation, not with a landlord.

It should have felt isolating.
I was used to living with other people and even when I wasn’t, I had a partner one phone call away.
We shared dinners, and we shared our bed.
I was never really alone.

Until after a long process of letting each other go;
I was.
And it was absolutely intoxicating.

Now by this time I had a decade of spirituality under my belt. My shelves were filled with books about yoga, Tantra and Louise Hay;
I had a double yoga teacher certification, one of them a 4 year yoga training.

But nothing had prepared me for the instant enlightenment the moment I started living alone.

And there was something that magnified the effect;
I didn’t have internet.
It would not be connected for months, I ran my yoga business from my landline and checked email on the computer at a gym where I worked.

When the pleasant haze had worn off, I thought I understood what had happened which was that living alone, had made me enlightened.
In other words; We are all, already, enlightened!
But our social structures repress it.

You do not need a retreat or to spend years in an ashram.
You “just” need to live alone.
This is usually way more expensive than even the most expensive retreat, and not encouraged by the society we live in (in particular not when you are a woman);
But still!
I decided to never forget this insight.
Living alone = enlightenment

I am currently coming out of a profound and prolonged period of social isolation. By now, none of my relationships are casual anymore;
They’re chosen.

And looking back on the earlier experience, I realize;
I didn’t understand all of it.
Because early 21st century me could not yet see WHY living alone had led to enlightenment.
What it had been, that had kept her in darkness when she lived a more connected life;
Unseen social dynamics.

My earlier interpretation had been very personal.
I thought it was him, I thought it was me, I assumed it was us.
But our heterosexual relationship had been an entry point where expectations of the whole World could come in.

A place for myself, was the foundation.
The recent time period of isolation, an initiation.

And the real journey, has only just begun.
.
.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living