Just Let Go

Sometimes the simplest advice can be the hardest to take. Here's how to practice detachment without giving up on life.

By Sally Kempton

So instead, the way I ease myself toward detachment is to practice offering. I connect myself to the inner Presence (the Vedantic texts call it Being/Awareness/Bliss), and then I offer up whatever it is that I'm doing, whatever I'm intending or wanting, or whatever I'm trying to get free of. That's the time-honored method set forth in the Bhagavad Gita: Offer the fruits of your labor to God.

Every spiritual tradition includes some form of offering (and some form of God), but for detachment practice, the two most powerful ways to offer are to dedicate your actions and to turn over your fears, desires, doubts, and obstructions to the one Consciousness. Offering our actions helps train us to do things not for any particular gain or personal purpose but simply as an act of praise or gratitude, or as a way of joining our consciousness to the greater Consciousness. Offering our desires, fears, and doubts loosens the hold they have on us, reminding us to trust in the Presence—the source of both our longings and their fulfillment.

Here is what the practice of offering might look like.

First, call to mind the largest and most benign level of reality you can connect to—whether it is humanity, a particular teacher or divine form, a sense of oneness, or simply the great collective of the natural world: humans, animals, plants, the earth and air, the stars and planets and space itself. Or simply become aware of your own being, the Presence or energy that feels most essential to your life.

Once you've done this, bring to mind the action you're about to do or the outcome you're hoping to bring about. Mentally make an offering of it to the Presence. You can say something like, "I offer this to the source of all, asking that it be accomplished in the best possible way." If your issue is a strong attachment or something that disturbs you about yourself, your life, or someone else, bring it to mind and offer that. You might say, "May there be balance and harmony in this situation," or "May things work out for the benefit of all," or "May things work out according to the highest good."

If you care deeply about what you're offering—your desire for a particular relationship, or your wish for the well-being of yourself or of someone you love—you may notice that you're reluctant to let go of it. If that's the case, offer it again. Keep offering it until you feel a loosening of your identification with your hope, fear, desire, anger, or feeling of injustice. Whenever you feel the clutch of attachment, offer it again.

Once you've made the offering, let yourself linger in the feeling space you've created inside yourself. The nurturing force of the Presence is the only power that really dissolves fears and attachments. The more we get to know that vast, benign energy, the more we realize it is the source of our power and love. And that's when our detachment becomes something greater—not detachment from desire or fear but awareness that what we are is so large, it can hold all of our smaller feelings inside itself and still be completely free.

Sally Kempton, also known as Durgananda, is an author, a meditation teacher, and the founder of the Dharana Institute. For more information, visit www.sallykempton.com.

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