Not just cynical and worldly people but average people conforming to society’s conventions shake their heads at the idea of eremitism. Both sets of people will argue that “experiencing the world” is the only normal course, living fully or living purposefully, as the case may be. Their argument is based on experiencing power in one form or another, whether on a throne or in a household, whether exercising it or accepting it as normal. The hermit may well have experienced the world, too, but has one experience that the powerful and the conventional do not: rejecting power, rejecting the necessity of “experiencing the world.” The hermit can and does experience the world as “not this, not that:” no particular form of empowerment but a going past the illusions of power and society, of impermanence and futility. The hermit (and the archetype “hermit” is within all of us) can recognize and experience an independence as well as an interdependence that relies on no one “thing.” No particular demand or emotion or experience. No demand for power. The hermit knows that to reach this point is a solitary journey. And no amount of worldly power or conventional experiences will get one there.