What does self-reliance really mean?

Have you ever tried to read the essay Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson? Maybe it was assigned to you in a high school or college class. Or perhaps you wanted to brush up on some of the classics and picked it out for yourself. It’s not an easy read! And for this reason, Emerson’s main point is often misunderstood.

Many people think the Transcendentalist term, ‘self-reliance’ means to rely on one’s self. It seems pretty straightforward. If you’ve heard of Walden Pond, a book by Henry David Thoreau, reflecting on the two years he spent living in a cabin in the woods alone, you might even think that ‘self-reliance’ to the Transcendentalists meant moving to a secluded place all by yourself, learning to live off the grid, and relying on nobody or nothing for help. That self-reliance means we must practice rugged individualism.

But that’s not quite right. At least that’s not how I interpret it.

When Emerson wrote about self-reliance, he used the word ‘self’ to mean ‘soul’.

It can be easy to misread or misunderstand his point because our current culture doesn’t identify self with soul. We typically identify self with one’s career, one’s productivity, or one’s outward achievements and success.

If we exchange the word ‘self’ with ‘soul’, we get a totally different understanding of the concept: Soul-Reliance.

What does it mean to rely on your soul?

Soul-reliance means you must rely on your soul to guide you through life. That is, your true, whole, authentic self. Your inner knowing. Not the person you’ve learned to be through a whole lot of social conditioning, but the person you are when you feel completely at peace. When your outward and inward life are at one. 

It can be hard to follow your soul’s calling with all the noise that surrounds us – from what our family, friends, and teachers tell us, to what we pick up subconsciously from TV, movies, and social media. How do you actually know who you are at your core? How do you know that you’re being authentically true to your soul, and not just doing something or being someone because it’s what others expect of you?

That’s the work! 

And this is precisely why the original Transcendentalists recommended spending so much time alone in nature, or writing in a journal, or in quiet contemplation. When you spend time alone with your self, with your soul, you begin to quiet down all the noise around you and you are better able to decipher who the real you is. You’ll be better equipped to rely on yourself: that’s self-reliance.

This is why meditation is such an essential practice in many of the world’s greatest religious and spiritual traditions. The practice of meditation gives us the tools to come back to ourselves. But only if we practice it with patience and consistency. Only if we give ourselves the time that is required to actually drown out all the outside noise and peel back all those artificial masks we’ve been wearing for years and years, and genuinely try to listen. Incredible things will happen to you if you give it a chance.

But it takes time.

You see, our soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions. Parker J. Palmers compares our soul to a wild animal. He says, “If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge.”

The same goes for your soul.

If you sit down in meditation, thinking about all the things you need to do that day, and all the plans you have, or all the things that haven’t yet been done, then you get up five minutes later feeling frustrated, exclaiming that meditation doesn’t work or that you’re just not good at it and give up, you aren’t going to get very far. 

You need to give yourself enough time and silence for your soul to come out and play. Sometimes I don’t settle into a meditation until I’m an hour into it! It’s rarely easy, but that’s why they call it a practice.

And if meditation isn’t for you, then maybe you can find peace and solitude by writing in a journal each day and reflecting on your thoughts, interests, and curiosities. Or perhaps you’d rather go for a walk in the woods by yourself. All of these practices are a way to quiet down the noise from the outside world and allow your soul to come out and speak to you.

Emerson said our true soul is “the voice which we hear in solitude, but [it] grows faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. It is hard because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

After finding a practice of solitude or meditation that works for you, the real work is to show up in the world as that true, authentic version of you that you hear when your soul speaks to you. It is something I struggle with and have to work hard at every day. But I believe it’s what my soul came here to do – to come back to myself. 

I’d love to hear from you! Do you have a meditation or contemplation practice of your own? How do you find peace and solitude? What tools do you use in order to listen to your soul speak? Let me know in the comments below.

With Love,

Jessica

Here are a few journal prompts to dig deeper into the topic of Self-Reliance – listening to your soul’s desires:
  1. What are the topics or concepts that you gravitate towards, or find yourself wanting to know more about? Are they truly what you find interesting and want to learn about, or are you doing it for someone or something else? What insights might this give you about your true self and your soul’s desires?
  2. What activities make you lose track of time? What could you spend hours doing? 
  3. What kinds of things do you find yourself coming back to again and again?
  4. What activities or practices do you enjoy doing that give you an opportunity to be alone in peace and solitude? How might you make more time for these practices or moments in your everyday life?