In any yoga or meditation class, you will often hear these phrases:
"be a witness"
"can you allow yourself to detach from the thought/emotion/experience?"
As a practitioner and a teacher, I want to speak upon my own experience of understanding what detachment is and is not.
Detachment of emotions, personal or collective, does not remove you from reality. It frees you from engaging with it any longer than you need to be.
Witnessing helps you to experience real time emotion. Experiencing real time emotion helps the next emotion in the process of emotions begin.
Witnessing separates naturally. Detachment unites naturally.
If your detachment process is pulling you away from the world then it is not detachment--it is escapism.
If your witnessing process is bypassing some of your emotions then it is not witnessing and yet again, it becomes escapism.
Escapism is separation by choice. It is not the natural form of separation.
When we practice the art of detachment, it begins with separation but intends to lead you to Oneness.
Our minds have to begin with separation, for we must first witness our experiences as either good or bad, pure or evil, love or fear...in order to see that there is another side to experience. Or in other words, to see that we are not alone but we are all-one.
The path to Oneness becomes more clear when we see that while there IS another choice, the ultimate One is how and what we choose to focus on.
We will experience love and we will experience fear. Detachment asks us, "Which do you choose to actualize most?"
My fiancé and I were recently watching the Apple TV show, "The Big Door Prize." For those that do not know, the premise of this show is that the town just received a machine at a convenient store that basically will tell you your life purpose.
[Spoiler alert--sort of?]
In one scene, the main character asks the pastor what he thinks about all of the hype over this machine. The main character seems to be experiencing a lot of anxiety over whether or not it is real. As the pastor listens, he tells the character this story that blew my mind.
He said, "I think anxiety came before original sin because Adam and Eve finally realized that they had another choice."
This led me into deeper reflection. Could I find some truth in this statement?
Of course I could! I mean, I experience anxiety at the grocery store trying to decide what type of jam to get because there are so many options to choose from. The anxiety says, "What if I make the wrong choice?"
But what if every choice that we make is both the right and the wrong choice?
This next bit here that I share may be a tricky one to grapple with but stay with me, if you wish...
For these bigger perspective questions, I go directly to my source, God. I don't do this to acquire some guru status. I do it because I am genuinely and eagerly curious about our existence on Earth. I do not believe I will solve it before I die so I try to not let it consume me while also acknowledging that I am meant to communicate in order to soothe my own complex thoughts. I am not saying this is an audible voice of God that I hear but an inquisitive moment of deeper reflection whereas it feels like I am hearing my own voice but at a much higher level.
[Yes, I have read the books Conversation With God by Neale Donald Walsh and no, I do not just experience God this way because I read them. I have always experienced my relationship with God this way--as a conversation--I just never knew it was okay to express it that way before I read those books.]
Furthermore...
I will end with the conversation that led me to write this blog post. It is how God explained our experience of witnessing and detaching from emotions to me. Remember, my first question was...
But what if every choice that we make is both the right and the wrong choice?
God: Every 'good' emotion you witness is also experiencing the 'not good' emotion. Every 'not good' emotion you witness is also experiencing the good emotion.
Me: I don't understand. How can that be so? Break it down for me?
God: When you experience the emotion of fear, you automatically want to experience love. Is that true enough to say?
Me: Well, yes...
God: Well then, the experience that you label as "wrong" is also quite right for it leads you to desire the opposite experience...that being of love.
Me: Okay. That makes sense. It reminds me of yin and yang. What about the other part of that statement? Every 'good' emotion you witness is also experiencing a 'not good' emotion? How is experiencing joy also experiencing misery?
God: When you experience joy, you automatically experience the misery of losing it. Do you not?
Me: For most of us...yes...we are human...but...
God: But what?
Me: Well, what would the "ultimate witness" be like then? What would the ultimate detachment scenario be like?
God: The one I just described to you
Me: Okay...
God: You do not believe that you can be both but you have to both in order to be One. The seed is not the fruit. The fruit is no longer just the seed. But they have to be separate first in order to be One.
Me: But some fruit still contains the seed...? Seeds? Maybe I am thinking too hard about this.
God: You are thinking just well. Still, the statement is true. The fruit is no longer just the seed. But they have to be in separation first in order to be One. If you do not see the fruit as the seed or the seed as the fruit then you have taken yourself out of the Ultimate equation.
Me: This is a metaphor for what you described to me when I started this blog about detachment, isn't it?
God: Yes. You are not experiencing the art of detachment if it separates you from the whole. The whole is All That Is.
Me: All emotions, experiences, choices...
God: Yes. Your C-ALLing is to hear it All as One. To hear fear as love and love as fear...joy as misery and misery as joy…self as Self and Self as self…
Me: Interesting. I just googled what the letter C in our alphabet means because of the way you worded c-alling. It says, "The ability to hear the sounds of silence and the voice of God." My jaw nearly hit the ground. Is this true?
God: Yes and no.
Me: Hm.
God: It is much more than what your Google has told you. Words are spell-ings.
Me: I see. We will discuss that another time. So, to sum this up...is it okay for me to choose to describe my experience as "frustration" so long as I do not become blind to the other side of frustration?
God: Yes, something like that. When you were typing that statement out, you originally wrote "be" instead of "describe." Then you changed it. Changing that word from 'be to describe' is ultimately what makes that statement mostly true.
Me: Ah, you caught that. Why is that?
God: The whole process of detachment is to see that you are not your thoughts, emotions and experiences and yet, to also see that you are them. You are not your frustration, alone, but you are your frustration in the All of it.
Me: Ahhhh whaaaat…I am NOT my thoughts but I better realize I am my thoughts too?? What?
God: You are not ONE thought. You are All of them. So as long as you do not attach yourself to one single emotion or experience, then you are living your true c-alling. You have to be willing to separate first in order to come back to wholeness. The seed is not the fruit, alone, but the fruit is still the seed.
Me: Ah, yes. I think that is enough for now. I think I am a lot more clear now. Until next time.
God: Until next time.
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The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
