It must have been about four years ago, that is, in 2022, back in Jerusalem, that I spontaneously started what later became my weekly practice of secluding myself, also known as התבודדות in Chassidus, in nature. This was already after I had realized, as part of my spiritual awakening, how language also serves as the gatekeeper of our mind-made prison (and after I had left my academic job as a linguist).
The initial shock of this realization was still rather fresh, and it had not yet been fully integrated into my daily life, even though I meditated daily and practiced a few more conventional spiritual disciplines. In retrospect, it was still half conceptual.
About four years ago, I listened again to the audiobook version of "Stillness Speaks" narrated by the author himself, Eckhart Tolle, who had already left a profound influence upon me and my post-academic life through his two books entitled "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth". But it was this third, lesser-known, and much smaller book that helped me directly experience how our categorization of the universe strengthens our illusion of separation.
When I listened to this booklet for the third or fourth time, I suddenly felt like walking in nature. Then, for the first time in my life, I started consciously listening to the stillness in nature without categorizing anything I saw there.
Little by little, trees started becoming nameless, individual trees started becoming unitary wholes that were not categorically divided into smaller parts, and the whole universe even seemed to have stopped being fragmented. The first reaction I had after this sudden and intense realization was to start weeping out of sheer joy on the very spot where I had been walking silently.
Since then, I have continued this practice weekly during the last hour before the end of every Sabbath. I have also continued this weekly practice after leaving Israel for another country and starting to live in a rural area with rich nature.
It didn't take me long to realize that many people in this new location are also trapped in the mind-made prison through language. I was such a "prisoner" myself, and a hopeless one at that. ;-) So secluding myself at least once a week helps me recharge in nature, where nobody labels me, others, or themselves.
During this weekly self-seclusion, I even stop my inner monologue, at least temporarily. I'm not claiming that this inner monologue has completely stopped, but after continuing this weekly practice for the past four years, I have started to experience occasional pauses in which I don't label anything and even remain equanimous.