About detachment

“Detachment” is a trend topic like “mindfulness meditation”. It is good to take a closer look. The problem which we humans permanently face is that we get easily attached to all kinds of happenings, emotions, thoughts, etc. in life. Positive experiences and being attached to them, is nice, beautiful, something which makes you happy. But they are quite rare today and up to 90% or more of our attachments are negative, causing stress, pain, sorrows, and so on.

Something bad happens like getting bad news and you are busy the whole day with thinking about them and producing bad emotions. You have an “attachment”. This is like an extra weight, a heavy burden or dirt which occupies you, keeps you enslaved or imprisoned for a certain amount of time. This means that you are not free during this time.

Today we are occupied not by one extra weight but by several or countless, new ones and old ones which all take our energy as we need to carry them, to cope with them. Mental weights, emotional weights, all this heaviness which charges the soul.

Indeed, the best picture to illustrate this is an innocent animal covered with ticks and full of dirt.

All these attachments keep us from a free and happy life, from self-determination. And so the spiritual path emphasizes the idea of “detachment” as a liberation from suffering.

The (superficial) idea is to stay centered, untouched and in balance when something happens, independent if it is good or bad. The reason is that permanently good and bad things happen and that we do not know the effects of these happenings. And certainly, we are not in control of all these happenings. And when we stay centered and balanced due to detachment, we keep health and wellbeing under all circumstances.

When we approach from these ideas, then this means that we are dead for this world. Further on, it means that we should try somehow stay detached from all what is happening and somehow it should work, maybe as a way of conditioning or learning process. Now, these ideas are not really satisfying or nice.

Let´s put more light on the idea of detachment. People reach naturally and automatically the state of detachment on the spiritual path when spiritualization has been achieved. This means, when the human-divine spirit has been activated, empowered and unfolded and this happens after a long training of cleaning, healing and refinement of the soul. It means that the divine spirit rules in the microcosm. And the state of detachment is connected to the state of sattva. Both come along naturally. So, only when you have achieved the state of sattva, then you can enjoy true detachment. Sattva belongs to the air element and the heart chakra, offers balance and inner peace and true freedom. The air element is untouchable. You become free like the sky and your nature is heaven. It is the nature of the adept, of the enlightened being.

In conclusion, real detachment is a matter of reaching a certain degree of refinement during the spiritual training. Conditioned detachment is only a low-quality-approach or replacement as it can never be as effective as real detachment. Conditioning is a learning process on the mental level.

Real detachment also means that you are free in your actions. This means that you are not limited by showing only subconscious mental and emotional reactions. You are free to choose your thoughts and feelings you want to express in all situations. While normal people are occupied by their emotions and thoughts, the adept enjoys freedom, refined thinking processes and refined feelings.

At last, – there is no real sense in being dead for the world. There is only sense in celebrating life. The goal is to refine yourself to a degree that you realize heaven on earth in your soul, including the detachment to the suffering.

Practically speaking, you can work on it by focusing on the development of your heart chakra and on your higher consciousness. Also add studies for the real understanding of creation and how everything works. Knowledge helps to reduce suffering. For example, when you understand that there are reasons for negative happenings, that negative happenings appear in a different way than they truly are, that death is not the end but that life goes on, etc.