Aloneness as spiritual practice is retreat from others, an intentional act of obscurity, and not as an act of betrayal of your devotion to others, but as an expression of your devotion to others. Indeed, the one able gladly to embrace his or her aloneness apart from others, which is really the aloneness of everyone but which few have recognized, is the same one more prepared to live in Love among others. Aloneness, apartness, obscurity, anonymity, and such qualities are not equated with living among others in most cultures, but such, according to the sages across the ages, is integral to being most gracefully in community. And, likely, that word being is vital to understand this. Our essential blessing in community is giving ourselves to offer an intangible sense of Presence, of Grace, and not primarily what we say or do. Being is essential to move beyond living together or sharing a common space to being communion together. Then, we come to see, obscurity is a quality that is not merely something we enter when apart from others, but is a quality of quiet, subtle Presence that, we could say, lives within us and expresses through us in our daily lives.