Hey, I'm Noel
Here I share soul notes from the inner odyssey — reflections, insights, and quiet truths along the way. Come explore.
Solitude, Breath, and the Observer — The Real Way Out of the Mind
Most people think they’re afraid of being alone.
But what they’re really afraid of… is being alone with the mind.
Because the mind doesn’t show up quietly. It shows up with stories. It shows up with old memories, old shame, old fear, old rehearsed identities. It shows up with judgment disguised as “motivation.” It shows up with rumination disguised as “problem-solving.”
And if you’ve never been taught what you are—beneath the mind—solitude can feel like drowning.
So let’s make a clean distinction:
Isolation is punishment. Solitude is medicine.
Isolation is the mind’s story of separation. It’s withdrawal, hiding, shrinking, shutting down. It’s usually fueled by fear.
Solitude is different. Solitude is awareness without the masks. Solitude is where the facades dissolve—the overgiving, the proving, the compensating, the performing.
In solitude, you stop trying to earn love outside of yourself and you start recognizing the love you are.
And yes—this can be uncomfortable at first. Because if you’ve been using relationships, noise, productivity, or caretaking to avoid the internal conversation, solitude removes your distractions.
But that’s why it works.
The question that changes everything: “Who am I?”
If you want a way out of the mind, you need the right question.
Ask: Who am I?
And as you ask, notice what falls away:
You are not your body. The body is a vehicle—temporary.
You are not a concept. Concepts came after you.
You are not your mind. The mind only conceptualizes and reflects.
If you keep asking, the mind eventually runs out of answers—because the mind cannot define what is beyond concepts.
What remains is awareness: the observer.
The observer is untouched.
Here’s an image I like.
Clouds move through the sky. Storms move through the sky. Lightning moves through the sky. But the sky itself isn’t harmed by what passes through it.
You are the sky.
Grief may pass through. Anxiety may pass through. Anger may pass through. Fear may pass through. But they are weather—not identity.
When you forget this, you become the storm. And the body responds as if the storm is permanent.
When you remember this, you hold space—and the nervous system begins to settle.
Breath is the bridge back to reality.
Breath matters because it’s one of the only things you can focus on that returns you to now.
When you focus on breath, the mind quiets—sometimes only briefly. But in that quiet, you feel something you might not have felt in a long time: presence.
That presence is not a concept. It doesn’t need words. It’s a frequency. It’s the natural intelligence in you—the part that can sense what’s true without needing a story to justify it.
This is why athletes talk about “the zone.” When the mind is quiet, intuition becomes louder.
Movement becomes easier. The body becomes lighter. You stop trying to control the moment and you start participating in it.
Be careful with nouns. Life is a verb.
There’s a linguistic trap that affects healing more than people realize. When you call something a fixed noun, you freeze it. You kill its movement.
It’s not a flower—it’s flowering.
And you’re not a static identity either. You’re living. You’re becoming.
Even roles—mother, father, partner, healer—are not fixed snapshots. They’re evolving expressions. When you turn a role into a rigid concept, shame and fear often attach to it. Then you start performing for the concept instead of living the truth.
Return to verbs. Verbs create possibility.
A simple solitude practice (10 minutes)
If solitude scares you, don’t start by trying to “love being alone.” Start by building the observer.
Sit.
Inhale slowly. Exhale slowly. 10 breaths.
Notice thoughts. Don’t fight them. Label them: “memory,” “projection,” “judgment.”
Ask quietly: Who is aware of this thought?
Place a hand on your heart and say: I can hold this without becoming it.
End with: I am. (And stop there.)
This isn’t about emptying the mind forever. It’s about no longer mistaking the mind for you.
The world is uncertain. People want certainty. The mind sells certainty through control. But control doesn’t heal you. Presence does. Solitude, breath, and the observer—this is the real way out of the mind. Not by forcing positivity. Not by bypassing pain. But by remembering what’s real, what never changes, and what you’ve always been beneath the stories.
If you want guidance practicing this in a way that fits your real life, I can help. This is what I teach—so you can stop being imprisoned by concepts and start living from the truth of “I am.”
