Detachment should not be understood as a running away from situations in life. Ignorant of this fact, many have wrecked their spiritual unfoldment by merely running away from sense-objects and comforts. We cannot avoid the world. We have to be in the world so long as we live in the present plane of consciousness.
There is no escape from perceptions, emotions, or thoughts. Detachment is a mental attitude intelligently maintained toward objects and beings around. Mere understanding of the pain-ridden nature of the finite world is not sufficient; this understanding must be completely assimilated by constant thinking and continuous realization.
Through intelligent and awareful experiments in our own life, we can build up an ever increasing realisation that detachment pays a high dividend. The knowledge so gained, the conviction so gathered as a result of our own personal experience, is what is meant by the term, ‘continuous realisation.’
The shattering shocks in life, not only the tragic events but even the day-to-day pinpricks in life, are all received by us only because we are making wrong contacts with the world around us. Our reaction to the environment will depend upon our mental evaluation of it on and our inner nature at that particular moment.
If our inward nature can be arranged, and continuously held in that arrangement, so as to make us react with the world positively, then we have discovered the secret of living in peace with the world, independent of its happenings.
This arrangement in one’s inner nature is called detachment, and a personality that has developed detachment becomes a non-conductor of the shocks in life.