Eight or so years ago our daughter was going through a tough time. At the same time I was teaching a course, Eastern Religious Traditions, at WCU. I had long known that attachment and detachment were important spiritual concepts in the East but had never really grasped the essence of what they were actually about. Love and fear and a stubborn commitment to my daughter brought me to an epiphany.
Love is a wonderful thing. Love is a terrible thing. Love makes you want with every fiber of your being to help people you care about. I kept looking for signs that Ruth was getting better. When I didn't see what I was looking for I just tried harder!
That didn't work out well.
One evening standing on our screened porch wondering where she was and what she was doing, an awareness jolted me. It took awhile to figure it out, but the experience of it was really very precise from the beginning. I was so attached to my idea of what help should be and what the results should look like, and so committed to helping this process along, that I was often being incredibly unhelpful. The very things I so ardently hoped for I was in many ways sabotaging. I was witnessing how meddlesome love's 'natural' actions can sometimes be.
So...what to do?
It took me awhile to be confident about this, but something in me recognized that it had to do with the very wisdom of engagement without attachment that I had been studying (and, alas, teaching). A person can love just as much and be just as committed without being so damn committed to particular outcomes.
To be a positive force in Ruth's life I was going to have to learn how to let go in a big way. That night I signed up for a full immersion course in engagement without attachment.
(To be continued....)
