The choice about whether to walk the spiritual path alone or in a community

Inspiried by a question about whether it would be more wholesome to walk the spiritual path alone or in a community. I would like to share some of my opinions on this. According to Stephen R. Covey, there are 3 dimensions to our life, our public life, our private life and our secret life.The public life is about how we express ourselves in the public, the private life is about how we express ourselves with our family and close friends, and our private life is the way that we experience life when we are quiet and alone, it's about the way we connect with our inner guide or conscience, and the way we connect with our purpose and the way we connect with the universe. In Buddhism, there are the paths of the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, I believe that they each have their merit and speak to the conditions of particular individuals. In my personal experience, I would like to say that a bit of the community-based interaction would be very helpful, since we can guard ourselves from merely living our self-conjured wonderland and we can enjoy the companionship from such an environment and such companions can prove to be very helpful when we are facing difficulties in our life, esp our spiritual path; however, I believe that it's equally important to allow ourselves daily time to contemplate, reflect and meditate on our own, since these periods of time are most conducive to spiritual growth and maturity and it truly deepens our practice. I think that the best way to draw the line is to know ourselves very well, to know our current conditions, and the final decision that we make should always speak to our current conditions. I hope this helps.

A talk by Ajahn Brahm which is somehow related.