Joan Halifax

where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams

As such, we are connected to each thing, and all things abide in us. Our psychological and physical afflictions are part of the stream of that beingness. On my second day in the desert, as I was walking in the late afternoon, I recalled the years of mental and physical sickness I have suffered. I asked myself then, Whose sickness is this anyway?
From one point of view, the suffering was my suffering. From another point of view, it was rooted in social, cultural, environmental, and psychological factors that were far beyond the local definition of who I am. My suffering is not unique but arises out of the ground of my culture. It arises out of the global culture and environment as well. I am part of the World's Body. If part of this body is suffering, then the world suffers.
Recognizing the World Wound also turns us away from a sense of exclusiveness. If we work to heal the wound in ourselves and other beings, then this part of the body of the world is also healed. Each of us carries or has carried suffering. This suffering is personal. But where is it that we end and the rest of creation begins? As part of the continuum of creation, our personal suffering is also the world's suffering. Its causes are more complex and ramified than the local self.

Aloneness teaches us how we are really connected to and interdepending with everything. Paradoxical though it may seem, solitude reveals our interrelatedness. Buddhist and shaman alike share this path of paradox.