ON THE ART OF DETACHMENT

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. -- Meister Eckhart

Some years ago,  I was listening to a friend. A friend who was bitching, kvetching, beating her breast and wailing...still, yet, again...about the Man Who Done Her Wrong. No, not a love, a guy at the filling station! A week before! Or a month, maybe!

I didn't listen to her the entire day, week or month...she went from friend to friend, and we all made listening noises until we couldn't anymore, and then we'd blow and blame her. The fact is we became her. Our blowing up at her was just our condensed form of bitching, kvetching, beating our breast and wailing.

For a long time, we'd feel guilty and spend our energy regretting...if not our lack of courage in  speaking up, then our bad behavior in blowing up.

It was a great gettin' up morning, when we realized we were in the process of learning the art of detachment. Think about it...how, why would we ever know the need to detach if we were living detached from irritations and aggravations to begin with?

A lot of free-floating guilt trips can be cut free when we realize unto acceptance that their base is simply our tool for learning a different way, God's way, to respond to life on life's terms. Also known as detachment.

The trouble with detachment, we learn sooner or later, is that the only thing we need leave behind is  our judgment of the complainer...it is the noise s/he leaves behind that we use to feed our ego-sense of superiority.

At some point, if we are sincere in our desire to detach, we will get a blinding flash of the obvious. We will grin, then laugh, then dance a jig, then praise the Lord...for we have just heard the quiet word: Just because s/he is wrong does not mean I am right.

Thank you.