Image Credit

As many of you know, last December I participated in the Spread the Love, NOW! writing project by blogging about compassion. My post, Cultivating Compassion Through ‘I Am That’ Thinking was selected by the judges as one of six winners to receive the prize of The Now Watch.

I was absolutely thrilled as after writing my article I had an epiphany of sorts about some of my earlier experiences with being a writer which I detailed in my article,
The Parable of the Watch.

The lesson of my article surrounded the way that we use our gifts and talents in life as opposed to what their true function may be for us.

Or expressed in another way, how our minds can get a hold of a gift or talent that we have and allow for only one kind of reality in which that gift can manifest…pigeon-holing us to create a very specific outer circumstance in order to have an inner experience that was ours for the taking all along.

I thought that would be the end of my writings about it, however, it turns out that the watch had an on-going purpose…one that beautifully illustrates the power of detachment and how that too…can lead to compassion.

On The Way

A week or so ago, Adam Rothenhaus, founder of the Now Watch wrote me to let me know that my prize was on the way.

I have to admit, I was very excited and wondered what my experience with the watch would be…as I was expecting with the word NOW printed across the front, it would act as a reminder to stay present and out of what Eckhart Tolle refers to as psychological time or our tendency to endlessly wander to the past or future and avoid living in the now altogether.

Last Friday, I came home from taking my son Sebastian to his gymnastics class and my husband looked at me and said, “There’s some bad news”.

Missing Mail

Our neighbor had called Jason to say that her son Scott had found a pile of discarded mail on his bike path near the front of their yard. Among the pile of discarded envelopes was the empty package of a Now Watch.

My husband embraced me after sharing the news, he knew that the watch was a symbolic confirmation of spirit for me and that hearing this might perhaps make me sad and it did. I experienced the swell of emotion and caught myself about to say a resounding “No!” to this circumstance and resist…but then I stopped.

Instead I just felt it, allowing my thoughts to go nowhere but to my breathing. As I breathed with no inner dialog I pulled back from the situation and viewed it from the larger perspective of the entire story that was unfolding…laughter and joy started to bubble up from inside of me at just how funny it all was.

I told Jason that perhaps the people who had stolen our mail needed the reminder of presence a bit more than I did and that this was the perfect opportunity to practice empowerment via detachment.

The Power of Detachment

Detachment is useful because it keeps us from wrapping our identities up in objects, people, circumstances or any number of things we may encounter in life that can be a source of unhappiness if we mistakenly associate these things, actions, abilities or situations with an extension of who we are.

Detachment allows us to feel just how large and connected we really are within our challenges, attachment on the other hand makes us feel small and alone.

It allows us a separation from our ideas about ourselves and the rightness or wrongness of our life circumstances and experiences by connecting us with the core of who and what we really are in the present moment…outside of judgment.

Using Detachment

I used a few methods to help me detach from the circumstances of the above story.

Breathe. The first thing I did was breathe deeply. It sounds like a simple thing but it is enormously helpful when you want to keep thoughts from hijacking your mind and running off with it. By breathing deeply and on count, it took my focus into my body and out of my head. Making it easier for me to experience the situation outside of judgment and giving me time to choose how I wanted it go.

Observe. The second thing I did was take an observer position. I climbed outside of myself and viewed the situation as if I was a bystander watching the event unfold. From this perspective I could see myself within the larger system around me and it brought the event to a manageable size.

Ever notice how when you’re right in the middle of something it looks so big that it seems like there is nothing else there but this problem confronting you? Becoming an observer is one of the fastest methods I know of for creating space around a challenge.

Trust. The third thing I did was consciously embrace the situation by trusting that everything had gone just as it should have.

I started thinking of the watch as having adventures and I got curious as to how it may bring a note of presence to it’s current company.

I began to wonder at the forces at work providing opportunities to all sides to grow…and I saw all of this as an extension of my own consciousness creating circumstances that would allow me to travel even further down that growth path.

Greater Good

I’ve been reading Little House on the Prairie to my kids at night (Laura Ingalls Wilder and I go way back but that is a story for another time ). At the end of the book when they have to leave the new house they built due to the government changing their minds about letting the settlers stay on the land, Laura says she finally understood what her Pa meant when he said, “There is no great loss without some small gain.”

As they had lost their home, their cow (no more milk or butter) and most of their belongings aside of what would fit in the wagon but they had gained not having to save certain foods any longer to start their garden and so they had a feast of sorts despite the circumstances…finding that the small things had the power to lift them out of the greater ones.

I found this perspective interesting today as I opened the package from the police department returning not one but two empty packages, both of personal development products.

I thought about the intuition that led the person who took the mail to come to our neighborhood and happen by our mailbox on the very day these products arrived. Surely, their guides were leading them in any way they could toward us…and the spiritual tools that were in our mailbox.

Does Detachment Mean You Do Nothing?

Detachment does not require that you do nothing. Detachment ensures that your actions will arise from the needs of the situation instead of from insecurity, anger or fear.

We feel very centered and at peace with all that has occurred and from this energy arose the action of replacing our mailbox with the locking kind over the weekend.

We did it happily and simply because it was what needed to be done .

You may wonder if we would have replaced our box anyway. Yes, we would have but without detachment we would have been angry and in a place of resistance, demanding that the situation somehow change so that we could maintain our false sense of control.

The outward effects of the two different approaches may look the same but the energy created makes a world of difference regarding your inner experience and the kind of situations you want to attract into your world.