"The journey can be very lonely even within a group. I think that is part of the process. God wants us to rely solely on Him instead of human resources."
Your comment puts me in mind of a couple of things. First, in Orthodoxy we speak of the communion of saints. When we pray at the Divine Liturgy we are conscious, even physically conscious of the presence of the saints there with us singing our hymn of praise and thanksgiving. This consciousness is quite real and therefore when we chant before the "Sanctus" that we are joing in the Victory Hymn of the angels, six winged and many eyed we quite literally mean it. That is the community of Orthodoxy. Finally, I remember a number of years ago attending a Vespers at the nuns' monastery outside the village in Greece. My oldest son and I were there with an uncle who had some legal business with the abbess. It was getting close to 6:00 when a cousin of mine, a nun, came into the Arxondariki (a room where vistitors are received and entertained)and asked if my son and I would like to attend Vespers with the nuns. We did. In a catholikon about 1000 years old, lit only by candles, my the 13 year old son and I chanted with the nuns. The icons painted on the walls, faded with the years and candle smoke were ghost like yet powerful at the same time. The nuns stood on one side of the catholikon, my boy, a workman and I on the other. At one of the high points of the chanting, my son whispered to me "Dad, this must be what heaven is like!"
A monastic community is a spiritually powerful place to be, Deborah.
I'm not implying it is not. My point is that the journey is an interior one whether one lives in community or as a solitary.