ThirstyFish

Sufi Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani wrote: "Loneliness is better than bad company". Is it? He is said to have spent twenty-five years wondering the Iraqi desert. But this I can relate to:

• A highly intelligent man, as a rule, must accept loneliness. Since the mob cannot rise up to his level he must descend. So he is frustrated, even agonized. Remember that you cannot converse with the vulgar without becoming vulgar yourself. The crass will drive him into solitude, loneliness tempt him back towards the Herd. Pain increases with knowledge.
--Anonymous?

The only remaining question is whether that pain ever passes a threshold. Is there what Sufis call union, what is called awakening or nirvana in Hindu religions, or what is effortlessness or wu-wei in Taoism?