Living without an emotional connection to anything doesn’t feel alive. So how is detachment valuable and can I achieve it while feeling alive with joy in the heart?
Detachment is certainly not the highest spiritual virtue of spiritual life. It is one of the practices and not even the highest or the best. A still deeper practice is equanimity and the highest of all is love for the Divine and surrender to Him. The purpose of detachment is not to become dull or inert as the stone but to be vast as the sun and the sky that supports and upholds everything without being itself directly involved in their affairs. Detachment helps us get rid of conditioned influences and biases that are often the cause of so much needless suffering and pain. It also helps us look at everything dispassionately rather than through the lens of personal biases and preferences. It helps us grow strong in the face of adversity. Above all, by disengaging our consciousness from being excessively involved with the outer world of senses, it leaves us free to engage with our true Self in the depths of everything. In other words, detachment with life as it is not only helps us understand and master the movements of life better but also, by engaging, attaching us with the higher and deeper Self, it helps us arrive at higher possibilities, higher knowledge and higher power. It is somewhat like a flight must disengage with the earth, defy its pulls and attractions to lift the aeroplane to the skies. So also it is only when we can free ourselves from the excessive preoccupations to the lower and lesser movements of nature that we can open to the higher possibilities hidden behind the outer appearances. It is like opening a doorway towards another and higher life as we turn our back towards its lower expression. One must turn one’s back towards the slopes to climb towards the summits.
Affectionately,
Alok da
