I have written several times on my feelings about detachment. I have been struggling with this topic for several months now. How attached is too attached and how detached is too detached? How do you detach from people you love and dislike with indifference? How do I do all of this without the people that I love feeling like I’m creating distance rather than true detachment?
All of these questions have run through my mind. I have even contemplated deleting my social media and solely focusing all my effort on my website to convey my ideas and keep track of my life and accomplishments. I love the validation loop too much to give that up for now but I am still contemplating it. The more I’m on social media the more I despise it. The more I look at how I influence my own community with my personal social media the more I realize that people don’t want to be sold something and they definitely don’t want to be preached at.
So, I have started with the newest group of people that I know, my classmates. I love them so much as they have become a 2nd family to me over the past several months. A group of yoginis that have no friction and seemingly believe in the best in others. I have needed a group of people like this in my life for some time now. I started to notice in my practice of detachment from them that I wanted there to be something wrong. I started picking out small little things that were wrong and clung to them. If a person was late, I disregarded them as a yoga teacher and then found I was actually holding a small grudge for them being a few minutes late.
I have only one person that I find challenging in my class and that challenge has become inspiration as of late. I admire the way that she can be completely be oblivious to others feelings, needs and time. She can literally stop traffic to put her suitcase in her car without even acknowledging the traffic she is causing. She can bluff her way through assignments and then blame the constructs of the class for her lack of preparedness. I am completely inspired by this. I admire people that don’t care about hurting other’s feelings because I feel like I walk on eggshells at times to avoid that very thing.
It’s easy to detach from such people that I desire no involvement with but the people that I am engaged with and love like family, the practice is much more difficult. I have also been working on trying to be indifferent to things and people. I have started with food. I have been grateful for the food placed in front of me if I like of dislike or like it all the same. I have also been working at indifference regarding work. As I have posted on my Facebook, I am trying to detach from the very people that taught me what it means to be attached to people.