High Involvement, Low Attachment
Do you want to know how to be happier AND have you life work better? Try this spiritual practice - be highly involved or engaged in your life, your work, and all the things that are in front of you WITHOUT being attached to the outcome, results, or the way other people show up and participate.
Now, I am not saying that this is easy. It goes against our very survival instincts. We tend to be extremely attached and invested to the way things are done and the results we want to achieve, especially when it something very important to us. Of course, when other people don't behave they way we'd like them to, or things don't work out the way we want - we spend an enormous amount of time and energy complaining, whining, trying to make it work our way, or trying to manage or get rid of "those people who aren't doing it right"! Not much happiness there and a whole lot of work and effort.
When this doesn't work, as it usually never does, we then through up our hands in disgust, and walk away: we decide "not to throw good money after bad", or we "take our marbles and go home" or we simply develop apathy and pretend that we don't care. Not much joy here and certainly no ability to have any decent results, because we're simply not in the game anymore.
Both of these responses seem completely reasonable to us, because they are motivated by our very real investment in, ownership of, and care for the thing we are trying to do. However, they are also motivated from our survival needs to be right, safe, and important. When these needs are threatened, well it's just not very pretty, is it?
The spiritual discipline is to be just as invested in, have ownership of, and care for the thing we are trying to do - but from a spiritually grounded place of trust, rather than need. From this place we trust that our involvement really does matter AND we trust that however things are unfolding and people are participating, somehow it will work out.
The spiritual practice is to trust that our gift - our presence, our ideas and process - is one of the ways Spirit IS showing up in the process, sand therefore necessary and valuable. And we trust that this is just as true for everyone else as well, however they are showing up. This is the HIGH INVOLVEMENT part. We also trust that the end result, even if it doesn't look like we thought it would, is actually the perfect outcome of these particular people doing this particular thing, so however it comes out, we can find the Good in it. This is the LOW ATTACHMENT part.
My experience is that I am happier and more effective when I participate in my life and my work from this perspective. My ego is less in survival mode, and my trust level reminds me that ultimately Spirit is in the house! Thanks to Michael Davis and Paulette Sun through "ON Course" for teaching me these principles years ago!
Trusting in the Oneness allows the joy that comes with living in the wholeness of Being involved and letting it unfold. The most complex of problems are resolved in ways we could not have forecast. I readily admit the detaching practice is the most difficult but I am here to say that practice works. Detachment like trust can be learned and it slowly becomes the reality of our conscious lives.
1 year agoThank you for the concept to consider.