Maintaining Spiritual Integrity Under Fire: Anger at God or Life vs. Detachment

Your comments to the previous thread were fantastic and really made me think about this subject in some ways that I hadn’t before. There’s enough material in your collective comments for more than one additional post on this topic; I’m going to start by trying to unravel just one thread of the discussion thread to see if we can get universal agreement on it.

Because if we can’t get universal health care, maybe we can still get that… (But probably not…)

Let’s Call It “Non Attachment” Then…

Crystal notes that the idea of detachment sounds emotionless and cold. Susie Q similarly says that she feels uncomfortable with the word:

“If being detached means I am unable to feel justifiable outrage at a wrong, if being detached means I am unable to feel passion enough to stand up for something or someone, then I believe I prefer being attached.

“I don't want to be aloof about life in order to gain inner peace. I want to be emotionally involved in living.”

Kaushik remarks that “detachment” is more accurately rendered “non-attachment,” and that it’s not detachment from compassion or from living but from the drama of the ego.

My tendency is to say OK everybody, let’s just follow Kaushik’s suggestion and call it “non-attachment” instead of “detachment” – problem solved. To me the objections have always seemed to linguistic. Why? Two reasons:

I Have Neither Met nor Become a Meditation Zombie

First, my own experience of increasing non attachment (most of it unfolded on its own but there were times when I worked at it through meditation and mindfulness practices) has, over time, made me warmer, less self conscious, more available to others and able to preserve my sense of humor under adverse conditions. Second, I’ve never heard or read of anyone becoming a cold or aloof person as a result of increasing non attachment.

Certainly some percentage of people who seek non attachment become ego-involved with it, coming to view themselves as superior to others and therefore becoming cold, aloof, condescending or otherwise obnoxious. But this is the opposite of non attachment. It’s “spiritual pride,” the “holier than thou” attitude which is a mistake that followers of any religious tradition or spiritual path can make.

On the Other Hand, There’s Job’s Wife…

Raymond to Crystal (applies to Susie Q too I think): “Like Job's wife, you are insisting on an authentic experience of life. I think, like her you would refuse to buy Job's excuse for God's ruthless action; that refusal would be a sign of integrity on your part.

“Said Job's wife, ‘Curse God and die.’ A brave woman, to say the least.”

Raymond goes on to ask whether we should each go for whatever works for us or if further consideration of the meaning of non attachment is in order.

Let’s assume that the first inclination of any of us faced with great adversity would be to try to resolve it or overcome it. If that can’t be done, the question becomes: Do some of us find integrity by remaining in grief or outrage while others find it by letting go and moving on? Different strokes for different folks?

Note that letting go and moving on does not and cannot mean forgetting that terrible adversity is terrible adversity. For example…

The Job in Me

I don’t like my pressure sores, waking up several times a night from nerve pain, my diminishing ability to stand and "walk" (shuffle forward unsteadily for very short distances), being unable to sit at all and having to work at the computer kneeling on a chair outfitted with pressure sore padding while having to use a timer to remember to get off the chair and stand up every 15 minutes to try to keep the pressures sores from worsening any faster than they already are. I don’t like watching my disease continue to progress, my spine curve more and more, inexorably spending more of each day in bed and with more of my up-time taken up by interacting with health care aides and medical issues. It’s been almost five years since I’ve been able to leave the house; I don’t like that either.

I don’t like the effects that all this has had on my family over the past sixteen years. I don’t like watching my mom become increasingly confused with the progression of what looks like Alzheimer’s. I don't like the tremendous stress that my only sibling is under.

I don’t like any of this at all and I realize that fact. I understand it. I’m fully cognizant of it. I couldn’t forget it if tried.

But I spend almost no time reminding myself of this stuff, thinking about how much I dislike it, dwelling on it – hating it or grieving it. However, in the early years of the disease, I did plenty of both.

Going through that sort of process with any major new adversity is probably inevitable for any human being – attached, non-attached, detached, semidetached… I say “probably” because I notice that with major new events I now react much less. It takes me three days to get over something that would have taken me three or four years if it had struck a decade ago.

Do we continue to grieve or hate what we can’t change, finding integrity in this, or do we move on in the sense of refocusing our attention on the possibilities that remain? Do we identify with the dimension of ourselves that lets us move on, or the dimension of ourselves that says, “This is unacceptable?"