Detaching yourself from the experience

Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent...

Detachment doesn't mean you don't let experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it.

If you hold back on the emotions- if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them- you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You are afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then you can say, "All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now i need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

Once you recognize the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain- then you will be able to say, "Okay. this is fear. Step away from it. Step away."

I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry--we suppress our emotions. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

Turn on the faucet, wash yourself with the emotion. it won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, " all right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is".

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely- but eventually be able to say, "All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now i'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world and I'm going to experience them as well.

Detach....