Acceptance & Detachment?

 
Many spiritual paths are facilitating people to reach a point of happiness through a combination of acceptance, detachment and perhaps disassociation. Effectively this is saying that if you get to a point of total acceptance to what is happening to you then this results in you becoming detached and disassociated from such events and situations and therefore through not being affected by them then you become happy.

Spiritual Paths Advocate Acceptance & Detachment

A friend of mine wanted to know where I stood on this? Is this what I was aiming for? Was I aiming to achieve a level of consciousness where nothing would rock me. Well the answer has to be both yes and no.

The same friend told me, that one of the patterns in his life that he had come to accept and be detached from was that orders he placed to companies rarely proceeded without problems. They would invariably get misplaced, lost, held up and so on. Although, this happened consistently, he was now unmoved by these events. From my own experience and perhaps larger perspective I have to ask, what is causing this pattern? And is it not important to resolve the cause rather than negate the reactions? Investigation of this pattern revealed that another (higher) aspect of my friend had upset another Being on another level such that this Being was interfering and causing this pattern to manifest not only within the original existence but within many other existences too, including of course here. Now acceptance, detachment and dissociation may make him happy and more content but is it making him free? As this pattern will continue undisturbed on many different levels, causing problems and restrictions to many different aspects until it is resolved, then we feel that this is an important area for those on a spiritual path to consider. What is the relationships between your spiritual path and real freedom? Is your particular spiritual path offering a freedom from reacting to things that are disturbing? Or are they offering you a means to free you from the original cause? If you ponder on the relationship of happiness and freedom, then you will then perhaps appreciate that it is easily possible to be happy while not actually being free at all.

Is Acceptance & Detachment a substitute for NOT resolving issues?

Also, understand that the example that we use here is a minor one and of itself not very debilitating. It could, for example be much more restrictive; It may be that you are unable to sustain a relationship, or not let go of being a perfectionist, or you may be very distrusting of people, or be unable to express your truth and so on and so on. Within this context, all a limited acceptance and detachment is doing is help you disassociate from your reactions to what is keeping you limited, bound and trapped. You may be happy but you are not free.

So, for myself, I aim to respond with acceptance, but also to look at each situation to see how free I am in my response to it. If I am not free to make any free response then I need to investigate why and work to correct it. In this, detachment is for me essential as a tool that can allow me to openly investigate and then appropriately respond to resolve what is causing the conditioned reactions, faulty ideas, incorrect truths, faulty mindsets and so on. Doing this means that these cease to be a problem within any part of yourself on any level – not just here. This approach also means that you naturally become open to new ideas, knowings and understandings that may help you achieve a deeper wisdom and hence manifest new movements here and in fact everywhere that is affected by this change. Detachment from events is from our perspective a very limited detachment.

Manifesting an Expansive rather than a Contracting Reality

What does moving into true UNITY entail? Many people are trying to grow within the limited frameworks and concepts that they are familiar with and which to a certain extent they hold to be true. however, you cannot really move into complete freedom by doing this. YES, you can start out with these but at some point you have to let go of everything if you hope get closer to real freedom inclusive of happiness and contentment.

To manifest UNITY here properly cannot be done by achieving a limited view of acceptance or detachment. If you look around you won’t see many models, communities or groups that have achieved this. Why not? Well this is because many (if not all?) are trying to live up to certain concepts, ideas and understandings that we have been told or that we assume are spiritual and which we are trying to aim for? We have to look for ways that allow us to look at ourselves and to really see what we are creating, in our thoughts, feelings and life. If this is not making us free – irrespective of the concepts that we are trying to live by – then it is the concepts (or paradigms) themselves that are limiting our ability to manifest a new reality? So, to really achieve UNITY means that you must free yourself from all dogma, belief systems, restricted understandings, spiritual truths, knowings and so on. This includes your inner guidance which can only interface with you with regard to your own limited understandings, and hence more often than not will confirm what you already deeply hold to whether it is true, or useful or not.