What exactly is emotional detachment?

Question

AA and Al Anon use a technique referred to as "emotional detachment" where the idea is to let a person who is making destructive choices make them and leave them to deal with the consequences of their choices. Is that all there is to it? Any further insight into achieving this but still being supportive?

Answer 1

Actually, it's a form of self preservation. If you get too close or involved with someone who's in the self destruct mode, you tend to get dragged down into their nightmare. That's one reason they say not to try to help an addict, just listen to them and offer support, just don't get so involved that it takes away from your life. I was living near the edge and no one could reach me. It took a near death experience and a hospital stay to wake me up. Once awakened, it was just a matter of learning how to live life again. Sometimes people cannot be reached and you definitely don't want to be there when they reach their "Point of Know Return".

Answer 2

Emotional detachement is what it states in one nutshell. You can always remain empathetic to any cause but not allow it to take over your life and drag you down.
E.G dealing with a family member who always chooses to make the wrong choice, instead of feeling the pain and suffering one decides to be empathetic and support them through the consequences they now have to deal with.

Answer 3

All religions enjoin humans to live unselfishly. Witnessing someone help others selflessly is as spiritual an experience as seeing a devotee praying to God. Such a one cannot be confined within the selfish centre of 'me' and 'mine'. When you work unselfishly, you lose your 'I'. Every unselfish action takes us a little closer to the Supreme Consciousness.

On the other hand, every selfish action acts as an obstruction to our finding the Divine Truth. Once, Ramakrishna was talking to his devotees. "Compassion to all creatures..." — so saying he went into a samadhi . After gaining consciousness he said: "An insignificant worm crawling on Earth, who are you to show compassion to others? Serve man, recognising him to be the manifestation of God."

Ramakrishna's disciple Swami Vivekananda coined the word ' Daridranarayan ' — God in the form of the poor — and said: "Where should you go to seek God? Are not all the poor, the miserable and the weak, gods?"

Lord Krishna reveals to Arjuna the secret of success in all undertakings — spiritual or material — "Renouncing all actions in Me, with the mind centred on the Self, without hope or ego, freed from fever, fight on" (3-30). One who can work in this manner arrives at the same stage as a religious man ( bhakta ) does through his prayers and the wise man ( gyani ) through his knowledge.

A devotee always has God in mind; a philosopher lives with the knowledge that the world is a delusion. The unattached worker has love for the universe in his mind. He treats all duties as means with which selfishness may be overcome. A sincere worker need not believe in God or mukti ; yet, he finds the Ultimate Truth by unselfish work.

A nurse loves the employer's baby. Even then, if she is asked to leave, she does just that and begins work again in another household, looking after another baby. Be like the nurse, Ramakrishna advised, and know that God is our employer. When one works with detachment and freedom then there is no tension.

But, thinking that the world needs our help gives rise to attachment, arrogance and pain. It is the giver who is blessed, not the receiver. Lord Krishna said to Arjuna: "Look at Me. If I stop work for even a moment, the whole universe will cease to exist. I have nothing to gain from work; but I work incessantly without attachments" (3-22).

God is detached because He really loves the world. Rather His love is real and that is why He is detached. Real love can never produce pain or jealousy, which is slavery. A mother loves her children selflessly. When one can give to the world like a mother only then can one realise Divinity through work.

There is another way in which selfless work can be put in practice — by offering everything to one's God, by working as if it were worship. Swami Ranganathananda, president, Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math, says that the presence of love for a particular cause can make the work light and enjoyable.

Absence of love for the work makes it a boring exercise. Work becomes drudgery when something is wrong with the mind. When the mind is disciplined and detached, working will mean relaxation.

One need not go on a holiday just in order to take a break from work — work should be treated as relaxation. Holidays should be a passage from one joy to another and not from boredom to joy.

When the idea of doing good becomes a habit then one need not seek any reason to do unselfish work. As Swami Vivekananda said, "That which is selfish is immoral and that which is unselfish is moral".