Why do we have such a hard time letting go?
I didn’t like this term detachment when I first started learning about it. I thought wouldn’t life be meaningless if I let go of everything? Maybe monks and Buddha’s can say this but how the heck is a 20 something supposed to let go of all attachments?
Now I am incredibly grateful for this practice of non-attachment as it has completely changed my outlook on life for the better and reduced my stress and worry a hundredfold. The thing where people get stuck on is the idea of detachment meaning completely letting go of all the things that matter in your life, and their comfortable lifestyle. Detach from my child/spouse/lover? What a “selfish/impossible/unthinkable” thing to do. Drop all the comforts I worked so hard to acquire in my life? No way!
People get confused to think that detachment means walking away and not caring about these things, but this is a great misconception.
Detachment isn’t a stand alone practice... if we only detached, detached, detached we would feel at a loss. The letting go process is to generate more room to move closer to deep peace within. In yoga we call it “satchitananda” truth-consciousness-bliss, some people call it true self/higher self, or God/Goddess or Creator or universal consciousness. I call it all of those things as for me their is no difference. So the more and more we crave this inner peace, love, freedom and bliss the more and more we are able to detach from everything else that does not bring us truth, love and bliss. This has to come with a whole lot of trust. Trusting with deep intuitive knowing that inside you exists the love, bliss and wholeness we all crave. Sometimes we need to reach out to friends, teachers or spiritual books to re-establish our faith again and again as life is constantly testing us.
When we know fully that with