The only genuinely spiritual people I’ve ever met all have warm hearts, loving hearts. Because the soul is a warm thing, and it resides in the heart – this is its home. Such people don’t need to be categorized as spiritual, they don’t have specific practices, they don’t advertise themselves as spiritual whatevers on social media nor do they carry yoga mats to feel superior; these are every day people who just live in a life of full heart and full love. These are the parents who love their children, the people who know how to truly listen and pay attention and not judge others, the people who feel compassion for others and the little animals, the people who reach a helping hand and are not too high to kneel to help a little one, the people who just live in their entirety within.
There are a lot of misconceptions and misinterpretations of spiritual concepts, and today we’ll talk about a buzz word in many spiritual communities: detachment. People sometimes say “Oh, I am detached, nothing affects me. Everything is maya, get over it, be detached.” But if that’s how they truly feel – that nothing affects them – then it is perhaps a psychological issue rather than some spiritual enlightenment, illumination, spiritual mastery or emotional sophistication.
Sure they preach about detachment and maya to others, but if something goes wrong in their life and hurts them, is it maya? Is it maya if suddenly you lose all your money in the bank? Is it maya if someone hurts you or when someone you love is hurt? Is it maya when you suffer and your very body feels the pain? It’s all good when it’s happening to others, but when it happens to them they are not so “detached” after all.
There is a difference between detaching from your own lower urges and compulsions, and detaching from your heart, your humanity and your compassion for other people’s emotions and situations.
If you can’t feel, it is certainly not transcendence. All spiritual masters felt everything – they cried for others, they felt mercy for them while being generous and holding out their hands. And while they felt everything their emotions weren’t radical nor out of control – they weren’t emotionally dumbing onto others, they weren’t throwing their emotions onto others and making it the others’ problem; they had self control, emotional management and awareness. They had profound sensitivity attunement and feeling control and responsibility. That’s the distinction.
The idea of detachment isn’t about being heartless, being a stone, being cold, or being some superior holier-than-thou like you are some egoistic narcissistic dictator. Having perfect inner yogi control while being fully and entirely attuned to sensitivity, feeling and emotional awareness are what enriches the spiritual life. It’s not about running away from emotions, it’s not about not being swayed, tainted, affected by emotions; it’s not about being unaffected, it’s not about being a stone, it’s not about ignorance, it’s actually about clarity and purity. It’s about not entangling yourself while still remaining in connection to the heart; it’s about not letting your heart and inner essence ever be changed. The simple truth is that we all, as human beings, will be entangling ourselves in some shape or form because of the nature of our humanness, humanity and our interactions, so rather than focusing on holier-than-thou statuses and definitions to feel more important, we just shouldn’t lose our compassion along the way.
There can be danger with misunderstood concepts, statements and incomplete truths, because it can lead to disempowerment, unhealthy behaviours, illusions, deflection from self, and limitation to growth and maturity. In fact, all incomplete truth and/or knowledge can be dangerous.
When anything is shared without context or deeper understanding, problems can arise. In the old days, certain spiritual concepts were shared only with the more advanced students who were initiated – because the student had to be ready to perceive and receive it. In fact, often times, highly esoteric and spiritual truths are written in riddles or hidden between seemingly ordinary words in texts or mainstream articles, which will be seen and perceived only by those who are on that level of consciousness.
“I am not responsible for how you feel” is another very commonly phrase we often hear in our modern world. I’ve witnessed people who would say the meanest things to someone and then say, “Well, I was just being honest and sharing.” No – you were being hurtful to another person.
Being honest in our conversations and staying in our truths is not the same as crossing someone’s boundaries, being disrespectful, inappropriate, lashing out, or hurting someone, or giving them unasked opinions. And when we do cause someone harm by our actions and words, or crossing their boundaries in any shape or form, we are very much responsible for how they felt.
When we adopt such philosophy as an absolute truth, we are essentially separating ourselves from our heart and from others. And a big part of spiritual development is the recognition and acceptance that we affect others with our actions, thoughts and words; it is an understanding of interdependence, and of our role and contribution to everything and everyone around us.
While we are only in control of our own reactions and responsible for our own energy, the statement “I am not responsible for how you feel” does not imply that we hurt or harm someone by our words and actions. While we are not responsible for how someone interpreted our statements and how they project onto us and their inability to understand what we are saying because they are entangled in their own inner stuff and don’t have the awareness to perceive what we are actually saying, we are definitely responsible for not harming others, for not crossing their boundaries and for managing our own energy. Emotional maturity is knowing your contribution in things and in the environment you are in and the people you are in, and ability to understand that when you throw a stone in a pond it will create ripples.
Lust is a common attachment in our world, and that’s actually something we may witness in nature also, so it is a natural impulse for our human nature. But once our lust for physical attraction and base level desires end, i.e. it doesn’t stimulate us anymore, it doesn’t tempt us, and we’ve naturally lost interest in it, then we may be detaching ourselves from it. And then, that same natural force and power awakes within us a divine consciousness, because we shift the fires within us to transform ourselves from within, we become free of the lust and turn it into love and a sense of purity and liberation. That’s the freedom, the detachment that frees us – and this then becomes divine attraction rather than base lust.
You become mesmerized by the divine beauty, you begin feeling it in your entirety. And then – you begin seeing the divine in every other human being also, so you feel mercy, you feel compassion, you feel for them within you and without you all and everything. Your heart expands; it expands with so much love that it almost hurts with tears running down your cheeks.
It’s just that you are not responding nor changing your own inner nature being entangled in them nor are you throwing onto them your own uncontrolled emotions. That’s the real meaning of this word within the spiritual life, and that’s something that real spiritual people know deeply and understand deeply.
True unconditional compassion for all is a sign that you are expanding spiritually because otherwise you cannot truly feel it; you may feel it for some but not others or think you feel it only when it serves you etc. but you don’t actually truly wholebodily and wholeheartedly feel it. Feeling the divine emotions, the holy emotions, is what awakes the heart into its purity.
A lot of people who falsely talk about detachment are actually very attached to things, and mainly their ego. Detachment for them is a dry thing, a dry land within their so-called spiritual lives; it is a cold heart thing.
As mere human beings of course we are all naturally attached to something whether sattva such as attachments to clarity, knowledge, illumination, charity and happiness; rajas such as passion, movement and possessiveness; or tamas such as complete delusion, materialism and unhappiness. So yes, some attachments are more selfless and pure such as those sattvic in nature, because they seek to lead you to more light and will guide you.
Sattva, while high in spiritual purity and maturity, is still attached in some shape or form. It is attached to purity, clarity of seeing, wisdom and illumination, and the feelings that come from these fires of high truth and seeing; sattva is attached to its state of peace, harmony and serenity, charity and generosity and calmness; and sattva is attached to the beloved, to purity, to devotion. Think of monks – they are very much in full desire to their God, devoted and passionate about their paths.
Detachment doesn’t mean “no desire” – it is just about towards what and where your desire is channeled and felt. And even “no desire” still means having the desire for no desire.
All the three gunas of tamas, rajas and sattva are attached in some shape or form, and some might argue that it is precisely at least one human attachment that we need to keeps us here on earth.
I remember one spiritual master from India would say how he had a weakness for food, he loved eating! He had thousands of followers in the mountains, with people from all over the world who would come see him for his blessing, and each night when he’d come home the first thing he’d ask his wife was, “what’s for dinner!” His wife became so annoyed and asked him, “how can you be so wise, radiant, your whole aura shines, people come from all over, and yet you come and all you care about is some food?” He looked at her and said, “the day I don’t care for food anymore and don’t ask you for dinner is when you’ll know I won’t be here much longer.” It’s the food for him, the taste, the smell, that kept him here otherwise he would have kind of flown up a bit too much. We all need something to really care for and feel some attachment to – ideally, it shouldn’t be harmful to us nor others.
Is detachment in its real essence of spiritual enlightenment possible? Yes. But that’s not the reality for most people or at least it isn’t sustainable forever in every second in every day, no matter how sattvic we are.
And yet – perhaps it is precisely attachments that may sometimes give us an opportunity for a deepening. Perhaps we may learn to develop forgiveness precisely through our attachments and engagements and involvement with other people and the depth of emotions that enter us. Some people need to be attached to something deeply, so that it naturally eats all their other attachments and they come into a sense of freedom some day.
What tamasic essentially means is density in energy – so it isn’t inherently bad, because it is your body. We are all tamas when we sleep and rajas when we take a shower. We all have all three moving through us as energy; tamas, rajas and sattva are all within us, these are just energies, but ideally we want to be moving and expressing ourselves through the sattvic channel. Naturally, people who are truly spiritual will move through this energy without force; it’s just who they are. People who are sattvic in their true nature live much better lives overall.
Tamas actually has to do with a certain level of reason for birth also, because it rules the body as it rules density and the solidification of matter and karma that brought forth your birth alive. So tamas is not meant to be villainized or shamed, it is meant to be observed because it seeks to be understood just like all else does. This is what real spiritual practitioners and teachers and astrologers know: we don’t villainize things just because of what an ancient book said – we observe it, witness it, seek to understand it. And it will reveal itself to us.
However, we can’t stay in sleepy tamas state forever, nor should we stay negligent and not moving on our growth and evolution; so tamas often keeps people stuck within something already defined, outdated, fearful, egoistic, materialistic, selfish, ignorant, and rigid in their views and ideas and have limited perception.
Many people act sattvic, or disguise themselves as sattvic through speaking some knowledge, but it is false or incomplete knowledge or ego driven spirituality, because they are actually tamasic; and they self deceive, and deceive others also, because tamasic makes people live in illusions, delusions, and dissatisfaction; their continuous dissatisfaction stems from the emptiness within which they seek to fulfill externally, so lust and greed are common also. “Tamasics disguised as sattvic” becomes especially dangerous when they are in some sort of power or influence over others. They lack the spiritual ethics, real knowledge and compassion, and lead people astray, and so they can be actually really harmful when people seek them for advise or guidance, whether it is emotional, spiritual, mental or physical.
There are many of those impure tamasics in spiritual communities and you need to be aware and able to discern truth from false; because tamasics essentially can’t really see the real truth. They are often blinded or limited by the density they are attached to, and can’t perceive the spiritually pure – which is the sattvic, which essentially means a purified mind and body, including our senses. It is the over-stimulation or misuse of the senses that isn’t good to do, but it’s not that our senses are not good – they are needed because this is how we experience the world and tune into the wisdom of life; and our desires too are needed, because this is how our higher self guides us and move us towards where we need to go or focus on.
The spiritually impure can’t perceive the spiritually pure; they think they can and they will tell you they do, but they don’t and they can’t. This is why tamasics can’t really give you the real knowledge, because they themselves can’t see it; but they will surely almost convince anyone they can. It’s only those with the open eye of the mind and heart who see through them.
True faith, true spiritual self, doesn’t come from books nor buildings nor whether or not you are a vegetarian; nor is it you making yoga poses for social media and thinking you are yogi or thinking you are an astrologer because you watched some youtube videos. Dogma is everywhere, not just in a religious sense – it is everywhere, as is ignorance in our modern day world.
Many Christians go to church but they don’t carry Christ in their hearts. Many Buddhists preach about the love and compassion but their actions speak otherwise. Many Hindus give plenty of gifts to their deities in temples, while ignoring the mother and child outside the temple begging for some food. Do the deities need your money? No, they need your love and hands for humanity; because God works through our human hands and voices. If you want to serve, you need to be a good human being, so seek your desire to be that as much as you can.
Many people preach all about social causes or spiritual topics, and are self proclaimed spiritual leaders i.e. influencers; they give big speeches on big stages and then turn around to the very person beside them and treat them with disrespect. I’ve seen it happen. That’s not sattvic, that’s not spiritual; it’s false. And it’s certainly not some enlightened detachment, it is cold and dry and separative from our humanity.
True faith is something that is pure within, something that rises you and connects you and deepens your spiritual core – and I promise you, it is something that makes you more loving. True spirituality makes you more loving, because it expands you to feel beyond yourself and to see the subtleties of all, to see and feel beyond the veils – which in turn, deepens you in both compassion and clarity.
All the real genuinely spiritual people that I’ve ever met were not “detached” from feelings nor emotions, they have big generous hearts, warm hearts. They are detached from outcomes, judgments and expectations – but they remain connected to their inner essence, purity of heart and emotional wisdom. Gaining higher perspective and clarity of mind are not the same as emotional detachment, because the heart is the initiatory portal to higher consciousness.
As spiritual workers we are meant to stay rooted in our spiritual ethics, which means non judgment blended with compassion, reverence with ethics, and keeping our discernment with clarity of mind while also remaining in pure heart and connected to spirit. Our work is essentially to serve God; and with clients, you are serving the temple of God within them. You may be sometimes in a position to counsel people with difficult charts, or people who are just a bit too stuck in tamasic energies and can’t see yet – but you are still serving the divine, and the humility in this deserves to be treasured. Most of us as human beings are entangled in some past stuff, and some people are attached to stuff that they may not even be fully present or aware here and this may make it difficult for them to see and perceive clearly.
Nonetheless, you are serving God as a spiritual worker, and you are serving the temple of God within your clients; it may be a sleeping God, it may be an awakened God – but your job is to show light not darkness. Show light on the person, show them what they can be, return them to love through the light; don’t judge people for what they’ve done or where they are in life or their path. You are not there to be an entertainer on social media or youtube, you are not there to tell them what planets are malefic or benefic, because these are false concepts anyway, there’s no such thing, it’s not real knowledge, it is ignorant.
You are there to show light through your knowledge and wisdom, so that hopefully they can step on their dharmic path. You can’t help them step on that path, you can’t do their inner work nor help them realize something they don’t have the capacity for nor have already awakened within their own selves; you can’t save people and you can’t even heal them, and you can’t illuminate something for them because they may not be able to clearly see it whether now or ever.
But you can keep your heart, and keep it warm. You can stay in compassion and presence for them and where they are on their unique path. We are here to be human and humane and try to understand another person as much as possible, to have soft skins and soft hearts, and to do our best in lifting each other and raising each other up wherever possible.
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