The Art of Detachment – Freedom from Illusions, Transcendence, and the True Nature of Compassion

Posted On July 25, 2018 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

 The idea of what it means to detach from something can seem confusing because, like most ideas, it has both positive and negative connotations, based on how it’s being looked at, applied, or done, or how it comes about naturally. In all forms of spiritual development, detachment from the material world is considered an aspiration and desired level of attainment that’s necessary in order to transcend the material realm and maintain total control over yourself within the material world, while simultaneously being able to consciously direct and work with the Elemental forces of the gross plane. We can only act to direct and control what doesn’t direct and control us. We shape ourselves to be “like” whatever we associate with, blend into and become one with, and thereby use to create ourselves.

The whole basis of spiritual development is self-mastery as the means of deliberate self-creation as a form of transformation from one state of being to another. This is achieved through an understanding of the true nature of the material plane as a product of the mind that provides us with the opportunity and means to use it in a deliberate manner as the basis for producing our experiences of ourselves that serve to shape our identity. As we identify with others and the material world of form, we energetically bond with it, becoming one with it, and we use it to shape ourselves to be of the same nature and substance as it is. This keeps us as spiritual beings firmly connected to the lower, material plane through an illusion we create of ourselves, seemingly unaware of the true fact that we are the ones creating the illusion of the material plane through our perception of it. We likewise have the ability to influence and manipulate the illusion, but only if we’re not dependent on it as the means of knowing who we are and creating ourselves by way of our own self-created delusion.

Attachment

In order to understand what it means to detach, we have to look at what it means to be attached. Anytime we’re reacting to something, respond to being stimulated somehow in a natural and automatic way (without awareness), we’re being influenced and shaped by it. As we realize we’re being controlled by it, we simultaneously engage in the process of trying to gain control over it. We try to be, say, and act in a way that’s designed to get others to respond to us the way we want them to. We engage in attempting to control people and situations that we have an invested interest in somehow as an unconscious way of controlling ourselves through them. Anytime we have a need for something to go the way we want it to, for people to change so we’ll be alright, or need to be seen and beheld as being a particular type of person, or acknowledged and celebrated somehow, we have an attachment to those needs and desires.

If things don’t go the way we want them to, or if people don’t act and treat us the way we want them to, or if they don’t see us as the kind of person we want to be seen as (attractive, smart, witty, sexy, powerful, profound, kind, giving, strong, etc.) we feel distress of some sort and begin clinging even more desperately to the image of our own making. We become overly attached to our own ideas about things because we’re invested in the cooperation and participation of others in co-creating the reality we need in order to feel good about ourselves. As we create an image of ourselves in place of who we really are as a soul that lacks an actual material form, we need constant feedback and reassurance that our image of our self is real and somehow accurate in terms of how we intended it. This need for others to validate us in our own creation and give us constant feedback as to their perception of us as a means of reinforcement and strengthening our false image of ourselves, is an attachment to our own self-made image.

Realizing Motives

One of the easiest ways to recognize our own attachments to things, is to always self-reflect on what we’re doing and why, and what we expect to result from it. All action causes an equal or greater reaction, and anytime we act to do something we know it’s going to produce something as a result. Anytime we give to another while expecting something in return, we have to stop and realize what we’re actually doing and question ourselves in terms of our true motives. It’s natural for us to want to be thanked, appreciated, acknowledged somehow as being a good person, or somehow loved because of what we do. This is because like all behavior and actions, we’re actually using it as the means of creating an image of ourselves (ego) by way of it. This is because we’re identifying with being of the lower, material world of transitioning forms. Whatever we associate ourselves with and fashion ourselves to be like, we take on that identity and experience ourselves as being that way, and we create ourselves out of being a part of the material world, becoming dependent on it to know who we are.

Anytime we have a need for someone or something to be and do as we want them to, we should realize it and stop to reflect on the nature of that need, and what it shows us about ourselves and our true motives. Anytime we have a strong desire for something, we’re forming a connection to it and a desire to become one with it. Anytime we feel impassioned in some way, we’re actually being influenced by the emotion itself, which is what’s driving our thoughts about it. Anytime we fall in love with someone or something, we form a desire for the object of our love, and seek to unite with them in body and mind. In all these situations, we have to simply stop for a moment and self-reflect on what’s actually happening in these situations and what it shows us about ourselves, because we’re the one that’s producing it. We have to consistently ask ourselves what is the motivating force behind my perceived needs, desires, and passions? What is it I’m hoping to accomplish or make real through my thoughts about it and actions towards it?

All action is ultimately designed to acquire a feeling of some kind. Everything we do, whether consciously or unconsciously, is to create a reality out of which we acquire a sense of ourselves through the experience it allows. Anything that we’re attached to we’re connected with energetically because it provides the basis for a certain type of experience. We associate ourselves with certain ideas in others and specific types of situations as a means of shaping our identity around and out of them, that ultimately serves to keep us in bondage through a form of strong influence that makes us dependent on them in order to know who we are. We need them somehow in order to feel happy and achieve some level of self-fulfillment.

If we detach ourselves from these ideas we’ve held about ourselves, we often feel lost, as if we have no real purpose, or lack motivation to create anything in the most basic sense of the idea. True detachment comes by shifting our center from forming ourselves according to the outer world, and instead, learning how to form ourselves from our inner, eternal source of true power. When we do this, we begin stepping into our true identity as a divine being that’s in the material world, but not of it. We begin shaping our identity out of our spiritual nature rather than our animal nature. We come to fully realize that the material world in all its seeming diversity, is comprised of basic elements as Astral Light (photons) that are shaped into material forms as a dynamic story-line based on the interaction that takes place between our mind and it. We’re always the ones shaping the material world through our perception of it, creating a form of virtual reality as an illusion, that we then get lost in and mistake for being real, and begin using it to create ourselves out of, and produce an equivalent illusion of ourselves as our false ego or false identity, that bonds our soul to an illusion of our own making. We are not a product of the material realm, but rather the material realm is being produced by us, by our mind and soul.

Detaching from Emotions

The ultimate form of what we call detachment in the spiritual sense, which means detachment from the entire material realm, comes as a natural result of a series of other detachments that slowly act to dissolve the illusion of the material world that we mistakenly perceive as being real. The term real is being used here as being true. One of the first forms of detachment that’s crucial to all levels of creation and self-development is gaining an understanding of the true nature of emotions, what they’re designed to do, and how to not only detach from them but learn also how to use them intentionally to influence others and situations.

Emotions are what we can think of as the language of the material, astral realm that’s directly connected to memory of various sorts, and is the motivating force of instinct that produces automatic behavior based on the memory associated to the emotion. All emotion in this sense causes the memory associated with it to rise naturally in the mind and imagination of the individual, providing the subconscious with a pattern or dynamic for producing action that requires no thought, actual decision, or will to produce. They’re not intended to be brought into the conscious mind where they form the basis for our all our thinking and we produce a form of fantasy as a reality out of the emotion, which, due to its heightened sensory qualities, creates an enhanced version of reality that’s gripping and instantly engages us in the illusion it produces. Emotions are designed more as signals that prompt automatic behaviors out of non-thinking and non-creative beings of the animal and plant kingdom. They’re not meant to govern our thoughts or our will and make decisions for us in terms of how we create our reality.

Emotions are like electrical signals that readily emanate from all lower beings driven purely by instinct, and are transmitted throughout the astral plane (atmosphere of the Earth) where they’re received by other living beings that are in near proximity and of a similar nature. Whenever we receive an emotional charge from someone or something, it literally enters our body producing a pronounced stimulation that induces an immediate reaction. As we’re stimulated emotionally, we automatically reference and access the memory associated with the emotion, bring it forth in our mind as the means of interpreting our current situation to be the same as the past, and provide our subconscious (instinctual) mind with a pattern as a reality to produce automatic behavior out of in reaction to it. That’s what an emotional reaction is. It’s the communication between the subconscious mind of us with everything else that produces an instinctual reaction. The subconscious is the aspect of the mind we share with the entire natural and living world, all of which communicate via emotion and memory to produce spontaneous behaviors and actions that are thoughtless in nature.

Whenever we’re around someone who’s expressing intense emotions, we feel an equally intense inner stimulation that calls forth in us that same emotion, and we use it to engage and cooperatively participate in co-creating the same illusion as the reality produced by the emotion. While thoughts are always unique to the individual having them, emotions are universal, and something we all share and experience in a similar way as a motivational force. When an event takes place in our life that has a strong emotional component to it, the emotion acts to shape how we perceive and interpret that event to form our memory of it. The memory we form is a distortion of sorts based on the emotion we were experiencing, which is what formed the story we told ourselves about it that gave it meaning.

The meaning we give things through the story we tell ourselves about them, not only means something about others and the way things are in general, but about us in relationship (and as the creator) with it all. This illusion born out of the emotion as an expression of it is what we use to create ourselves by continuing to use certain memories as a filtering system to create more experiences of the same nature, and create ourselves in a false image as a result. Memory serves to give us instant interpretations of our current reality as a means of creating more of the same type of experiences as the past. However we’re stimulated by someone or something, determines what memory comes to mind as a similar experience, and we use that memory to make the current person or situation about the same thing. This is a very subliminal form of judgment as our very perception of something. Because we always identify with our experiences, which are self-produced, we become identified with the illusion of our own making.

It’s very easy to realize how emotions control us and run our mind, and how they determine what memories of the past we then tend to dwell in and continue living out of. When we allow an emotion to enter us and produce a like affect, we take on and bring into expression that same emotion, amplifying and increasing it, while creating a joint reality out of it. When we resist taking on other peoples emotions and don’t let them affect us, we serve to neutralize, contradict and thereby reduce or cancel out the emotion, preventing it from propagating and multiplying through us. Once we realize what an emotional charge is, and what’s happening when we’re being stimulated with a strong emotion, we can form a perspective that can easily allow us to keep it (emotions are entities with a life of their own) from entering into and taking hold within us. We can keep it outside of us, and not let it affect (infect) us.

The Nature and Production of Thoughts

In the same manner, by realizing that thought and emotion are always connected, and one acts naturally to produce the other, we can realize that whatever we focus on and think about produces our emotional state. Emotions arise in us as a natural response to our own thoughts. If we keep our mind focused on bad and painful memories, thinking about them in a consistent manner, we act to keep ourselves in the emotional state of our thoughts. Emotions produce the chemistry of our body by stimulating our endocrine system which then produces hormones that alter our state of mind while regulating all biological processes of our body to match our mental state. So our thoughts and emotions literally determine our physical health.

Invisible forces of various kinds are always what are acting to manifest the material world, through a form of cause and effect or stimulus and response. Thoughts and emotions are invisible and electromagnetic in nature, and act to move through and into matter, impregnating it with an idea as an imagined reality that provides the blueprint and instructions for producing an equivalent material body and outer reality (Monad). Energy as vibratory patterns form ideas that serve to produce our thoughts as the material form or reality of the idea, which then produce the equivalent emotion in response to it, which animates the pattern as movement, order and behaviors. These are always interconnected as different aspects of the same creative process, where one automatically produces all of the other ones in a synchronistic and systematic fashion.

Once we become aware of the nature of our thoughts and the emotional states associated with them, we can self-reflect on what natural tendencies are playing out through us as our formative conditioning, and through the awareness and realization it brings, we dissolve the unconscious pattern and are able to consciously detach from the motivating force involved and redirect our focus and thoughts in an intentional manner. The patterns of our conditioning and the emotional states we have formed a habit of living out of as a result, only continue to play out systematically through an unconscious state of automatic processes. One we become aware of them, they’re no longer automatic, and no longer producing the emotions and perceptions that control our actions, and we’re left with the clear realization that we have a choice as to how we respond and what we initiate as a result.

Transcending the Lower Plane of Instinct

Once we gain thorough realization around how we self-create through our emotional states and the perceptions they form that keep us attached to our past conditioning as memories, we step fully into a new and empowered position of true responsibility for our own soul development. As we detach from the illusions of the material plane born out of an unconscious state, we transcend the lower plane by no longer identifying with it and depending on it as a means of creating ourselves through the image we form of ourselves out of it. When the magnetic forces of the lower material plane no longer act to influence and shape the reality we form out of our thoughts, we are free of them, and can then interact with the illusion of reality from a neutral and unbiased state. We no longer believe in it as a fixed and stable idea, and realize with great clarity that it’s being formed in every moment at the individual level by the conditioned mind of each person who’s using it as the means of self-creating. All reality is produced by the mind of the individual perceiving it, and forms as a projection that’s in a constant evolutionary state as a fluctuation that propagates an infinite number of variations based on new combinations.

We cannot transcend the lower plane of Astral Light as long as we’re affected and influence by emotions and the perceptions of others. The material world of which we’re all an inherent part of is the plane that’s governed by an unconscious state of instinct. Emotions are the language of the material plane that produces experiences as realities that come as the expression of the emotion and produces more of the emotion as a cause and effect relationship. As we produce our experiences out of the combination of emotion and the thoughts they generate, we identify with our own experiences and shape ourselves by way of them. In this way we become dependent on and an inherent part of the material realm. Without our material existence we can’t experience our self and lose our identity in the sense of not knowing who we are.

In order to transcend the lower world of animal instinct and being created by our association within it as a material, animal body, we have to realign ourselves with the higher regions of the Astral Plane where thought exists in its archetypal form without the existence of emotions. What we experience as emotions is purely a product of the lower regions of the material plane that we don’t encounter until we descend further into the form our thoughts create. In the higher planes of creation thoughts are formed as the expression of universal archetypes that serve to produce an emotional state in response to them that is equivalent nature and act as the means of producing the thought as a reality through the activity that ensues because of their marriage as a harmonious combination.

In the higher realms of consciousness thought precedes emotion and is what determines it. In the lower realms of consciousness, emotion nearly always precedes thought as the governing mechanism that systematically produces an automatic thought process as a new application of memory. Thought comes in response to emotion in an automatic and unconscious fashion. The lower regions of the Astral Plane are governed by emotion, whereas the higher regions of the same Formative Plane are governed by thoughts that are original and creative in nature and formed out of the even higher plane of Universal Archetypes. In this orientation, thoughts are produced by drawing down the information contained in the higher plane of unformed potential, rather than from forces drawn up from the lower planes of emotion and the Collective Unconscious that governs the animal kingdom. It’s only by orientating ourselves from the higher to the lower that we’re truly creative and act to initiate, instead of being created as an affect in a haphazard manner.

The Art of Compassion as the Means of Transcendence 

The idea of compassion in its ultimate sense, comes as the perception of another persons reality from a higher plane that sees the true underlying reality involved as their own creation, and experiencing it as they do from within the illusion of it, without investing themselves in it personally or mistaking it for the actual truth. We cultivate the higher ability to be able to blend into and become a part of the material reality produced by another without losing the true realization of what it is and how it’s being produced. We perceive it as showing us the personal truth of the person who created it, and we gain insight into their psyche (soul) through our natural ability to deeply relate to them by using our mind to produce the same type of reality within our own mental sphere as an actual experience of it. We use our mind to literally become one with their mind in essence, without losing our bearings or getting lost in the shared illusion that’s created between us as a result of the union.

By blending with the mind of another and seeing life from their experience of it, without needing to alter it, correct it somehow according to our idea for the same thing, or interpret it in any manner, we don’t actually take it on through a belief that’s its real and happening within us also, but serve to reflect it back to the person projecting it onto us through their telling. When we become a neutral force in the world, unaffected by the emotional currents that toss it about violently from one extreme to another, and we witness the experience of another with no emotional reaction or mental interaction that alters it, we become a mirror for them allowing them to fully see what their own story about it is. In this reflection of themselves through us as a neutral entity that doesn’t form any kind of judgment of them based on the nature of their experiences, they’re able to penetrate it and have deeper realizations in regards to its true nature. They can see it, often for the first time, as their own creation and story about what happened to them.

When we can share an experience of reality with another without any form of personal investment or response to it, and truly see them as they are rather than as we remake them through our interpretation of them, we are creating ourselves from a higher level of self-awareness, while providing the means for them to gain higher levels of self-awareness through our reflection and non-action (reaction). When we operate from a higher level of consciousness that’s complementary to the material world, we don’t use a material identity as a fixed mindset to interpret everything to be like us in nature, and we’re no longer triggered into reactive emotional states in relationship to it. We become a neutral force that always reflects back to others the illusion of the material plane as their own creation and story about things.

Through this awareness we help facilitate their process of higher awareness, not as a theory or something we talk about and provide instructions for achieving, but as a demonstration that simply stimulates and produces a higher state of awareness in them in relation to us. We call them to a higher state of self-awareness that’s void of coercive emotions that allows them to realize the illusions they’ve produced by taking on the emotions themselves and producing a reality out of them as a self-made experience that simultaneously creates them through how they associate and identify with their own story.

From this level of awareness we realize fully that all of what we call reality is a product of the individual mind creating it as their perception of it. Through this realization, we not only no longer invest in reality as being real in the most basic sense, but realize instead that we are the ones who create our experience of reality by how we use our mind as the marriage of our thoughts and emotions to create it by how we identify with it and the story we’re always in the process of telling ourselves about it.

Once we have ascended to a higher plane of consciousness as our permanent residence, where we’re no longer influenced or controlled by the passions of the lower plane, and we can see the true reality of it clearly at all times, we can then step into our true creative ability to produce our own realty by using our thoughts to attract, absorb, and direct the emotional forces of the material plane as the complementary and formative, action producing component of our thoughts. At this point we create with a sense of total detachment that no longer identifies with the material world, and we become a neutral force in the world for helping facilitate the spontaneous process of self-realization for others that helps to propel them to higher levels of self-awareness so they can also transcend the plane of self-made illusions and attain a higher level of self-awareness by taking their rightful place in things as a divine creator of their self and their reality.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist and Coach for Personal Transformation and Self-Mastery