The A’s to Z’s of Just Looking at Ourselves
Detachment
We’ve traveled through the topics of acceptance, balance, compassion and arrive at Detachment. In the A-Z’s of ─Just looking at ourselves moment by moment, detachment gives us freedom from the need to be right, thereby making someone else wrong. If you’re thinking, “easier said, than done,” it’s true. I knew someone who actually announced with pride, “The last time I thought I made a mistake, I was wrong.”
We all know how to detach with anger, with resentment, slam the door, and storm out. The graceful dance of detaching with love is what takes practice. It takes the awareness and presence to realize when we’re caught in a verbal volleyball with someone and no one is willing to let go.
I grew up in a family where we experienced conflict and blame. During the verbal volleyball, my parents would defend and explain why each one was right and the other was wrong, until my mother usually ended it becoming the dramatic victim, announcing to my father or any of us kids, “Don’t do this to me. Why do you always do this to me,” as she stormed out. End of story! After the conflict, everyone pretended nothing happened and changed the subject. My sister’s and I never witnessed resolution or detachment with love. We never heard either parent admit what their part in the argument was. We never heard the words, “I’m sorry.” Have you ever noticed that we re-enact the same dramas in our marriages and with our kids that we had with our parents, even when we know better?
As a couple’s therapist, I would suggest that the boxing opponents go to their corner’s of the ring, take time-out and come back to the center when they’d calmed down, when each had time to look at their part and admit it. Conflict ends when you just look at yourself. Today, when I feel that surge of self-righteousness bubbling up, I ask myself, “Does this need to be said now? Does it need to be said by me?” Sound simple? It’s not easy. Sometimes we have to enlist the help of Divine intervention. Whatever your faith or religion, the minute you reach out to a power greater than your small mind, or your personality, the ability to detach becomes immeasurably easier.
Try it! Close your eyes and think of something or someone that is really upsetting you, a situation that you feel right about. Run through the details like an endless loop on a recorder. Now, connect with any energy source bigger than your thoughts: this might be Nature, God, Spirit, or whatever you choose to call it. Now, see yourself moving back from being in the midst of the drama, on stage with it, to being detached, in the audience observing it. Send love to yourself and the other parties because detachment doesn’t mean that we stop caring. It’s an opportunity to make a choice to withdraw from conflict, to step off the court and refuse to continue playing the old dysfunctional game. It’s sharing experience with a co-worker, then detaching from whether they use the advice or not.
Sometimes to detach we need to do an activity to distract ourselves from our own thinking. There’s an old saying, “You can’t think your way into a new way of living, you have to live your way into a new way of thinking. Enjoy the journey!
