On Detachment

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about detachment. Detachment is one of those words that you often hear in meditation spaces. And it can very easily be misconstrued. A lot of people hear detachment and they immediately think passive resignation or disconnecting from life or not caring how things unfold.

And it just feels so far outside the reality of one, what would be possible, but two, the way they would want to live their life. Because we're humans and we have things that we love and people that we love and to be detached from that. Oh, it just feels like there'd be a numbness. What would be in its place? Why would we even want that? It even feels like I wouldn't care about anything and I don't want to not care about anything. So this is, these are some of the myths around attachment, this feeling like we're just going to disconnect from everything.

But there's a difference between detachment from process versus detachment from outcome. And what we're talking about with detachment is more detachment from outcome. Detachment from outcome comes from a place of wisdom. It comes from the understanding that we don't know what our actions will turn into, what they will lead to. In many ways, it's not our business.

All we can do is show up fully, with presence, with care, with clarity, and do our best in each moment. And yeah, try to impact the moment in best we can, maybe for the potential for some future outcome that we may be desiring. But there's this deep understanding that the only thing we can influence and control is the input into this moment. That is different from detachment, from process, which is more related to apathy, thinking that our actions that were thoughts don't mean anything. Which isn't true, because they do have an impact on our lived experience.

They have an impact on the world, around us, our environment, our global community, and our most intimate relationships. So when you hear detachment in the meditation world and the mindfulness world, keep this nuance in mind. We're talking about detachment from outcome, not detachment from process. One comes from a place of wisdom. The other comes from a place of apathy.

Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.