There’s been a lot written lately about the Art of Detachment. The concept of detachment is to emotionally distance yourself from situations in order to see things more as they really are rather than as we see them through the prism of our experiences and personalities. The concept has a lot of merit, and by applying the Art of Detachment to our lives, we are liberated from certain expectations. When we think of attachment, we are likely warmed by comforting feelings of tradition, love, and predictability. We meet people, we are attracted to them, and we find ourselves emotionally attaching ourselves to them in an effort to continue the positive feelings we experience when we are around them. In relationships, however, pure love is not self-serving. In order to truly love someone, we must put the other’s interests either before our own or completely separate from our own. In essence, we must detach our own interests from that of the other. We must always be mindful that pure love is given freely, and whatever is given freely must be done without conditions or an imposed sense of obligation. By detaching ourselves from the self-serving (or self-“completing”) love depicted in movies and novels, we free ourselves and those we love from unfair responsibility and obligation and can experience true happiness, which is freely-given love. It is important to examine our style of love with the knowledge that selfless love is true love, keeping in mind the words of Jacob Boehme: “The mark of true love is as simple as it is rare: it is detachment from the tangle of personal motives that makes us seek happiness in making others conform to our desires.” The Art of Detachment can be applied to nearly every facet of our lives. When we apply for a job that we really want, we attach our hopes and dreams to that one particular job. If we don’t get it, we tend to take it personally and develop feels of rejection and low self-worth. Those feelings are unfounded as there are so many variables involved in the hiring process. Our default reactions are almost never the true reasons for not attaining something we believe we want, but we become so attached to outcomes, if the outcome isn’t positive, we feel tremendous disappointment. The Art of Detachment does not suggest becoming distant and aloof from people or situations; it simply suggests shifting awareness from only our own perspective to other perspectives. When we are not attached to a predicted or assumed outcome, we experience things more organically, motive-free, and positively!
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 19:18:55 +0000
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