Detachment is a Game Changer! Seven Benefits of Detachment

Check out these two quotes about detachment. The first is from Mother Angelica. She said, “Is detachment the answer to freedom? No, because detachment is negative -  it is to be without. The answer must be positive - I must replace what I have with something better.” And this next one is from Meister Eckhart. He said, “He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing: detachment.” Which one do you most agree with?

Meister Eckhart was a German Catholic theologian who was born in the twelve hundreds. Mother Angelica was an American Roman Catholic nun who was born in 1923. They are both Catholics, yet they are a world apart. 

In this episode of Surviving to Thriving, I’m going to explore detachment from a holistic, complimentary duality perspective and give you 6 benefits of detachment and 4 or 5 steps to practice it. Thanks for tuning in. I’m your host, Laura Giles, and I welcome you to Surviving to Thriving. Each week, I talk about some aspect of the sacred wheel to help you move towards living a connected, balanced, natural life. 

And detachment is an expression of the Air element, and Air, of course, is the element for Spring. It’s where we are now in the season of Coping. And I know of no better tool for coping than detachment. You might even say that if you engage in detachment, there is no need to cope because most of your problems dissolve away.

I just gave away the punch line, so let me back up with a dictionary definition of detachment. It says that detachment means aloofness, freedom from prejudice, or partiality. I agree with that, but then as a synonym it says coolness, indifference, or unconcern. That’s where it gets sketchy because I think a lot of people think that detachment means apathy, that you don’t care or are emotionless.

I invite you think of detachment as more of being objective, open, and in a state of wonder. Don’t leave your emotions behind and don’t disconnect. Be fully present, but uncommitted to giving something a meaning. Without defining things, without having a story about something, you can’t commit to a feeling or emotion either.

For example, let’s say that you read about a flood that causes a lot of property damage and minimal loss of life. Is this a tragedy or a miracle? It’s only when you commit to a point of view that you can express emotion. If you are open and in a state of wonder about it, it’s just a thing that happened. You’re now flexible enough to respond to the situation in multiple ways. You’re fully present. You’re participating in life, but you’re not boxed in.

A while ago, I posted a podcast about two choices - living in love or fear. When we are in a place of detachment, we’re always in a place of love. So, I totally disagree with Mother Angelica that detachment is negative. It’s neither negative nor positive. It just is.

Life is what it is. There is a beautiful Daoist story about a farmer called Maybe that illustrates this very well. So, one fine morning in spring, this farmer’s horse runs away. Hearing the news, his neighbors come to visit and say, “Such bad luck!” The farmer replies. “Maybe.”

The next morning, the horse returns with three wild horses. He went from having one horse to four! Wow! The neighbors see this and say, “How wonderful!” and the old farmer again replies, “Maybe.”

Then the next day, the farmer’s son tries to ride of the one wild horses and is thrown. His son breaks his leg. The neighbors hear about this and come to offer their sympathy and call this a misfortune. The farmer’s response is, “Maybe.”

The next day, military officials come to the village looking for men to take into battle. Since the son’s leg is broken, he can’t go. The neighbors cheer this and call it great news. The farmer once again says, “Maybe.”

As with all stories, there are many possible interpretations, but most see that it’s impossible to tell whether something is good or bad. In the story, everything changes the next day, but in life, we don’t know what could happen as the result of any decision. It’s the butterfly effect where you might not know how a decision impacts the big picture until years later. It could be massive, tiny, positive, or negative - if you ever make that connection at all.

So jumping to conclusions and saying something is positive because you like the outcome and negative because you don’t isn’t really effective. It can often lead to creating factions. I like red heads, but I don’t like blondes. Now, just like that I have a prejudice and an in group and an out group. That’s what we’re trying to avoid if we are living in a space of love and connectedness. 

Everything has a purpose in the sacred wheel. Everything has a time of birthing, ripening, decline, and death. We like to say that death is bad and it’s to be avoided at any cost, but that’s not living honestly or fully. In a lot of stories, there is an obsession with immortality, but if you think about it, it’s pretty horrible - especially if you are the only one who can’t die. You get to watch everyone you love pass away and go through changes that you don’t have to experience. So how connected would you feel? How lonely? And does immortality also give you health? If not, you could live a long time with disease and pain. That would be a curse, not a blessing. So, when we see things holistically and from a big picture perspective, it all just becomes natural and a thing that happens. 

I have to detach from my dreams and opinions if I am ever to grow. If I am 8 years old and think that the only thing that I could ever want is a pony, how does that work if I am 24 and I realize the cost and labor involved in having a pony, when I live in a townhouse? Maybe I still adore ponies at 24, but that shouldn’t be the obsession at 24 as it is at 8 because I hopefully have a very different perspective then.

So, practicing detachment is allowing life to be as it is. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is what it is.

Once I am standing in that place without any opposition, I can accept the blessings and changes as they are and make choices for moving forward without being encumbered by emotions. And that is not the same thing as being emotionless.

Here is what I mean. A long time ago, I was talking to a client about detachment. She was upset with her mother for holding views that she thought were unkind and narrow minded. She felt like she had to take a stand against her mother to protect a friend, and she loves her mother. She sees herself as a person who would stand up against injustice, but she felt like she was in a bind because she didn’t want to go against her mom or her friend. And she felt like if she didn’t stand up to her mom, she could be betraying her own values.

So, I gave her an out. I said, “Why not practice detachment?” She thought it meant not caring, turning a blind eye, and letting an injustice pass.

I explained that one could say that she was making a lot of assumptions and value judgments that might not be correct. Maybe her mom wasn’t wrong. Her friend didn’t know about her mom’s comments, so maybe she wasn’t hurt. Maybe this incident didn’t have any huge or long term implications at all. Maybe she could allow her mom to be as she is. My client could be as she is. And her friend could be as she is without anybody judging anyone or being offended. 

That’s what detachment is. It’s about boundaries, and letting other people take care of their business, you taking care of your business. If this woman offered everyone love and acceptance and let go of the rest, do you think they’d all have peace with her? I do. 

When we start taking sides, making other people take sides, and insisting on right and wrong, or insisting that people see things the way we do, we create more strife. Now sometimes it’s worth it to take a stand and right a wrong. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating being a door mat. I’m saying most things don’t require us to get excited or break into factions. We can let go of most things.

So, let’s talk about the benefits of detachment.

The most important one in my book is being debt free. By that I mean emotionally debt free. I have been a past life facilitator for a long time, and what I have come to understand is that everyone who has some past life energy that gets activated and causes them problems, all of that comes from emotional debt. Death is almost a get out of jail free card, and they say, “Nope. I am going to hold on to this.” and so they carry it from lifetime to lifetime.

So, if they die afraid from drowning, maybe they are born with a fear of water or drowning. If they die angry at their ex for betraying them, they will find them again and try to work it out. If they die upset that they were swindled out of some money, they may be born again with a chip on their shoulder against people with money or maybe they have money and are very stingy with it. There are lots of ways that this emotional debt can show up.

But even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, you don’t have to to see how holding on to energy can impact you in this lifetime. I work in trauma, and most problems in life come from something that happened in childhood that we’re still holding on to. It doesn’t even have to be something that was intended to be hurtful or something that you remember. It could be that your dad died. You were too little to understand. You just knew that you felt abandoned, so you avoid all relationships with men because you fear being abandoned. Or it could be something that was abusive, like your big brother dangled you over the bridge and threatened to drop you into the river below and now you have fits of rage and panic attacks, but don’t know why. Everything is connected. 

Life’s a pay me now or pay me later type of situation, and if you are not letting go of your emotional baggage, it will pile up and just keep following you around. I’m not saying it’s easy to let it go. Especially when there is a trauma involved, but it’s certainly possible. I see inspirational turn arounds all the time in my work. It’s why I keep doing it. It feels so good to see someone light up and change their whole life. 

One way to get there and to keep it moving in a positive direction is to practice detachment.

Another benefit of detachment is that you stay out of petty squabbles. Do you know anyone who is miserable all the time or gossips all the time? Maybe they bait you to get emotionally aroused with them. Maybe they are into politics, soap operas, religions, or one of the many hot topics that press people’s buttons like abortion, racism, or gun violence. What if you just responded to that by either excusing yourself and refusing to engage or listening and just saying, “Maybe” or  “Hm, that’s nice.” Now maybe that means that you don’t really have an opinion on the topic, or maybe you do and just decide to agree to disagree. Either way, you’re living in that space of love, aren’t you? It’s live and let live. 

Another benefit is that you don’t catch feelings. If we are in a room with Debbie Downer, we don’t have to catch her depressed mood. What some people tend to do in this situation is to lift Debbie up. If she feels better, we can feel better, but when you’re detached, her mood doesn’t have to be your mood. You can see it for what it is and maintain your peaceful bubble without having to change her. Isn’t that a lot easier than giving her all your energy to boost her up and then feeling drained afterward? 

When you are detached, Negative Nancies avoid you. If they want attention from their negativity (which is why a lot of them are negative in the first place), they will learn that they aren’t going to get it from you. And that’s good because you don’t want to reinforce unpleasant habits. We teach people how to treat us, and if you are the Good Vibes guy, people will come to you with either good vibes or at least authentic ones. 

A person who is looking at others to bring them up is like a drowning person. They don’t realize that in their panic and instability, they could destabilize you too in a really big way. If you practice detachment, you are with them without taking on their stuff, so there is zero chance of being destabilized by their stuff. This is healthy. And if you are going to help others, it’s the only healthy way of practicing compassion. 

Another benefit is that you don’t get resentful of other people. If you give, you are doing so consciously. You are aware of what you are giving and of the terms in which you give. There is no covert ops going on, no manipulation. You are a sovereign person who is in control of you and everything inside your bubble. You’re engaging from a strong, aware place.

If you are not detached and your heart is out on your sleeve, it’s very easy to get sucked into giving more than you want to. Adults with unhealthy attachment have decades of using back door tactics to get what they want, so you may not be aware of what you’ve signed on for until you have a mountain ahead of you that you’ve promised to scale. I’m not saying they are bad people. I’m saying that this is how they’ve learned to navigate in the world, and it’s what they do.

Detachment gives us space to see things clearly, so we’re less likely to get swept away by emotional appeals. If it’s a last minute offer to buy something that we don’t really need, pressure to take a job that we know will be a soul sucking situation, or to stay in a situation that isn’t in our best interest, detachment helps us to stay in our wise mind.

We have an emotional mind, reasonable mind, and a wise mind. We need all three. The emotional mind helps us to have a life that feels worthwhile. Life’s hard. Feeling connected, worthy, and fulfilled keeps us going. Reasonable mind is great for making plans or doing detail work, like balancing a checkbook, planning a vacation, or preparing for retirement. Wise mind is a little of both, plus intuition or a spidey sense. It’s a place where we just know. 

If we’re not detached, we can feel like we “just know” something, but it’s really us just playing tricks on on ourselves and convincing ourselves that are our emotions are true, when they are not. Emotions aren’t logical. You can’t trust them. But you can always trust your wise mind. It’s never wrong. If you are detached, you can feel more sure that you’re in wise mind vs. emotional mind.

Another benefit of detachment is that your worth doesn’t depend upon anyone else’s opinions. It’s a way of taking back your power for your identity and value. You aren’t giving that power away to anyone else. It doesn’t matter what you wear, where you live, the color of your skin, what job you have, or how much money that you have. You know who you are. 

I find that this gives me more compassion for others and a greater ability to connect to them because my acceptance of them doesn’t depend upon their acceptance of me. When I worked in a prison, everybody there is both ready to not like you because most of them come from rough backgrounds where people weren’t trustworthy, AND they are also super ready to like you because they haven’t been really liked by a lot of people in their lives so they need that. People who come from this type of background are really good at reading people. They have to be because they need to know if you are going to cheat them or cause them harm.

When they see that you don’t want anything from them - meaning you need their approval, they are a lot easier to connect with. I think that’s true of all people though. Bonding through trauma, or feeling close to someone because you are both emotionally needy creates a very fragile bond. You’re going to walk on eggshells a lot in that relationship. It’s a lot better to heal and learn detachment.

And here’s the super cool part about it, it’s a skill. Anyone can learn this. It just takes 4 steps. Want to hear them? Here they go!

The first is the Observe skill. Observe means to notice what you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. It’s factual. It’s objective. My list of observations of a specific thing should look almost identical to yours. The only deviations come from you or me missing details. Since judgments are not allowed, we both should only report observable facts.

For example, if we are looking at a woman standing on a corner, we could both agree that she’s got blonde hair, she’s wearing a short skirt. She has on high heels. She’s chewing gum. If one of us said she is ugly and she’s a hooker, neither of those would be things that we can observe because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and we don’t know that she’s a hooker. She may be scantily clad, but we don’t know what activities she engages in because we can’t see that. See what I mean? I couldn’t say she is desperate either because I can’t observe her inner thoughts or feelings. So, it’s only what I can objectively observe.

Next is the nonjudgmental skill. If you did Observe correctly, there should be no judgments. This is a double check. If your thoughts have any judgments, delete those now. This should result in you either feeling more distance and clarity, or you start to get really anxious.

If you get anxious, you have an additional step. That is to observe yourself. What is creating the attachment within you? How are you suffering? Why are you suffering? In the example that I talked about earlier with my client who was upset with her mother, her inability to let it go didn’t have anything to do with her friend. Her friend was just as worthy and lovely as she was before her mother stated her views. It didn’t have anything to do with her relationship with her mom unless she wanted to make it about that. 

It had to do with my client’s sense of identity. She viewed herself as someone of integrity who stood up for the underdog and for injustice. But she wasn’t going to change her mom’s mind. She didn’t have that power. So, practicing detachment was the only real way of letting it all go and bringing everything back into a place of balance and health. My client was okay. Her mom was okay, and her friend was okay - all without anyone having to change. 

Whatever the problem is, if you fix it within yourself first, most of the time, the rest of it goes away. 

Okay, the next skill is radical acceptance, which means it is what it is. You can use this as a mantra to remind yourself about the “Maybe” story. It is what it is. Labeling it good or bad doesn’t really change it. Time will tell if something is beneficial or not, but regardless we all have cards we can play, so we might as well use the power that we have to move things in the direction of our will rather than sit passively by and judge and complain. 

Life is dynamic. We’re not in control of everything. If a ball comes towards us, we have the option to hit it back, miss it, or let it go by without trying, but we don’t have control over how many balls come, how fast, where they land, or how big they are. In the big scheme of things, they are all just balls. We might like some more than others. Some might be sweeter than others, but they are all just balls. They are what they are.

And one more thing on that note. I wouldn’t desire only easy and sweet things. We need hard things to make us feel accomplished and to give us a sense of purpose. I was on vacation once at this beautiful tropical resort where all I had to do was get up, enjoy the flawless weather, eat, drink, and laugh. I got really bored, really fast. I think you would, too. So, if you can enjoy the mountains and make them fun, I’d do that. But even if you can’t, it is what it is. That’s not heartless, it just is.

And the last skill is to Participate. Don’t just observe and sit back and say, “that’s nice.” Life is a participation sport. We get old when we stop breathing and withhold ourselves from life. We all have things that make us go <<Sucks breath in>>> and we hold our breath. Some of us forget to exhale. Breath is life. We’ve got to inhale and exhale, give and take, love and be loved. If we’re not participating and that yin is equal to the yang, we start dying. 

So, I am going to ask you, what are you withholding? Who are you not smiling at? Who are you not forgiving? What are you withholding? You can’t withhold energy without also withholding it from yourself, so my suggestion is that you exhale and let that stuff go. Do it for yourself. We all want to be juicy, right? Yeah, get yourself some!

The sacred wheel will keep moving and changing regardless of whether you think it’s nice, sweet, or horrible. It’s a whole lot more peaceful to accept it.

If the Air element is your jam, you’re probably saying, “I’ve got this! No sweat!” But if it isn’t, remember that this is why we’re here. To help you learn about it and get better skills for the journey around the sacred wheel.

If this all sounds intriguing, but you’re like, “I don’t really know what you’re talking about” or “I get it, but I don’t know anyone who lives like this,” come on over to the private group and meet people who get it. We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, so if you’d rather be talking about the moon than what’s on Netflix, and if you would rather have real conversations with real people than superficial conversations over a beer at the brewery, you’re welcome here. 

Building a natural, connected lifestyle takes commitment - especially if it’s new or radically different. The link to the group is in the show notes. We just had our quarterly bonfire gathering and it was a really sweet way to bring in the seasons of spring. We foraged for our dinner and connected with nature and each other. Cool times!

If you find the podcast helpful, please share it with someone who can benefit and write a review. It’s a great way to give back. I appreciate you guys. See you next week.