Who Wants Detachment Anyway?
Many people come to me for their first healing sessions with goals which express a rather “low bar” for what they hope to achieve. They tell me, “Well, I guess I’d just like to feel… less stressed,” or “… less upset”, or “…some relief,” with regard to X, Y, or Z which they find challenging in their lives.
I always counter their proposal — laughingly — with a much “higher bar” which I prefer to set as a goal for all of my healing sessions: and that is “Joy”. In my experience its only by helping a client to reach a state of feeling total joy, in-the-face-of whatever issues they are dealing with, that a person can find true healing and freedom. Reaching a state of “peace” represents having achieved a certain state where there is feeling of an ‘absence of upset’. However, the experience of joy is a more elevated state of feeling “filled with happiness” — it is reached only after a much deeper inner cleansing has occurred, following the removal of all of the inner baggage we were carrying.
In a seminar with an Enlightened Spiritual Teacher by the name of Byron Katie, I once heard Her say, “‘You know… ‘Pleasure seeking’ and ‘Joy Seeking’ take us in completely opposite directions — a 1000 miles apart.” I had no idea what She meant, it seemed to me that seeking joy and seeking pleasure were basically the same things. I pondered that statement for several months before some clarity arose… Pleasure seeking is about pursuing what we want and what we like, in hopes of finding satisfaction for our desires … Joy seeking is about finding happiness with “what is” and “what we have” — right here and now. Joy seeking involves doing the inner work to find happiness within, while pleasure seeing involves searching for some form of fulfillment outside us. In joy seeking we grow freer, as we let go of our ‘neediness,’ and attachments. In pleasure seeking, we may actually become more needy, more burdened and dependent on our attachments, and ultimately more dissatisfied and unhappy over time.
I often share with people that finding Joy, and I believe all healing, is actually more of a process of shedding than it is a process of acquiring. When we learn to let go of the pain of the past, and let go of worries about the future, what remains is the inner beauty which shines like we see in children who aren’t carrying any unreleased inner upsets or burdens. This shedding happens when we rise in consciousness to become aware of — and then let go of — what has been burdening us.
So who wants detachment anyway? People often think of the idea of “detachment” from only a negative standpoint. It sounds like a very dry kind of relinquishing of what we hold dear, similar to the notion of “renunciation” — and there is often a sense of loss we imagine will be accompanying the act of detachment.
But what’s crazy is that it is our “clinging” that truly results in our loss — when trying to hold on to something, we must renounce our freedom, and we come to find that it is we who are being controlled by whatever we cannot let go of. This can easily become an emotional roller coaster, when we try to hold on to things and or peope who are really out of our control. When we can’t let go, isn’t this truly renouncing our freedom and happiness?
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”DETACHMENT IS NOT THAT YOU SHOULD OWN NOTHING —
BUT THAT NOTHING SHOULD OWN YOU”
Ali Ibn abi Talib
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A truly detached person is not someone who is experiencing “indifference” or a kind of “emptiness” inside, instead he or she probably has a face lit with a radiant smile! They realize that their joy is more important than trying to cling to things which could to be taken away at a moment’s notice. What in life can we truly hold on to? Ammachi (The Holy Mother) says, “Even our next breath is uncertain. Try to live life like a bird sitting on a dry twig. The bird can fully enjoy all of nature and the beautiful vista it surveys, but it is ever ready to fly away in an instant, in case a gust of wind comes and the twig breaks.”
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”He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.”
―William Blake
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True love, thus, is also a hallmark of real detachment — it is unconditional positive regard without any strings attached. Attachment arises out of our neediness, trying to fulfill our own desires. Love arises out of fulfillment, and is accompanied by a desire to ‘give’. So when most people think of detachment, perhaps a picture of a monk comes to mind. But I would suggest the attainment of real and true detachment would look more like a picture of a character such as Santa Claus, or the beautiful picture below of Ammachi! Isn’t “detachment” the sparkling quality we see in truly happy people — whose happiness comes from within — and is not dependent on anything outside of themselves? Perhaps our modern idea of “detachment” has gotten a bad ‘rep’ and needs a bit of revison!
