Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. “But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’. Mitch Alborn, Tuesdays with Morrie
Detachment is a virtue; a strength of character. It does not imply living without emotion. Have a read.
With detachment, we experience our emotions without having them master us. Now, there is strength. Indeed, in our past few posts, we have looked at the power of acceptance to accept where we are when we are with whom we are. It is the starting point virtue. In matters of economies and more, we must begin with a healthy acceptance of that starting point.
We also looked at the virtue of beauty to see the potential in any situation. It allows us to see beyond the starting point. Then, we examined creativity as that virtue of strength in finding the path forward.
In so doing… in accepting our starting point, seeing beyond it and creating the path forward, there will be emotions and passions; sometimes very strong. They can serve us or deter us. Detachment is the virtue that is the bulwark; the fortress of strength. It makes us masters of the emotions we experience.
In the coming days, we will explore detachment as that strength. For now, I suggest one question. What is one situation you might be facing where your emotions might get the better of you in such a way that they might be a distraction in walking your path forward? In other words, what is one situation in which you need to practice the strength of detachment right now? Then, consider the card above. Ponder it and reflect on thoughts around how you might put detachment into action.
Peace, passion and prosperity.
Barry Lewis Green, aka The Unity Guy™
PS
Detachment could be The Dance