“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.”
― Simone Weil
Healthy detachment is not indifference. Nor is it something cold and aloof. The detachment that is based on fear is a way of self protection from the chaos that seems to be a part of everyone’s life.
Attachment can be a form of slavery. First, we seek ‘another’, yet the ‘other’ is often a carrier of our own unfulfilled desires that we seek in the ‘desired’ what we either do not have in ourselves, or we are unaware of it. We make the one sought after into something other than what they are. In the end, they have to withdraw because there is no real relationship.
We can become enamored with people, political movements, and communities in general. We place a burden on them to take care of us and when that does not happen, either the relationship is miscarried, or once the infatuation passes, after a struggle, a real relationship is begun. It is then that healthy detachment can enter into one’s journey. To finally come to the understanding that people and groups and religions and political communities have severe limitations, is when we are then put in the position to actually deal with our own inner world and to stop running from it. In that process is freedom slowly embraced as well as healing. However, the struggle is always present.
Our relationship with God is no different, though it comes from a much deeper level in one’s soul. We can project onto God many expectations. For a time we will live in delight with God until because our relationship is not ‘real’ but based on simple inner needs, God will withdraw and we will find ourselves alone, in darkness and may have feelings of betrayal and abandonment. This is a necessary step for most people if they wish to draw deeper into a loving union with God. For many, they will withdraw and their relationship with God will be tentative and stillborn. Yet one day they will have to experience ‘the stripping’ away of all that keeps the soul from the truth we are all made to experience…..Union with God. It is then the true nature of joy is understood and that reality of the grace that allows that to happen. For it is grace that calls us, we are pursued.
It is hard to understand the love of God….perhaps impossible, yet this love can be experienced at ever deeper levels if we allow grace and the healing and purifying fire of the Holy Spirit to do its work. It is a pathless path, for we each have our own journey. However, all that keeps us from the experience of this joyous union is in reality ‘sin’ and imprisons us.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
