On Desire & Detachment
I’m no philosopher but I tend to agree with the Canadian-American philosopher James K.A. Smith, when he says that the emphasis on the mind rather than the heart has been to the detriment of spiritual growth and transformation into mature, integrated people pervaded by love.
Due to the Enlightenment and Protestant Reformation, the West has lost much of the contemplative mind that was at the heart of the Christian tradition for the first 1500 years or so. James Smith argues that our “telos” or ultimate aim and direction of our lives, is not shaped so much by what we believe or what we know intellectually as much as it is by our longings and desires; that, “we are lovers first and foremost”. He says, “To be human is to be animated and oriented by some vision of the good life, some picture of what we think counts as “flourishing” [and I would add happiness]… this is why our most fundamental mode of orientation to the world is love. We are oriented by our longings, directed by our desires.”
We move towards that which we love and consequently become what we love. It’s certainly true that we become what we contemplate but equally true that we are what we love because our desire precedes our thoughts.
To be human is to desire. Some have suggested that we may have gotten it wrong by strictly following René Descartes ontology which views humans as primarily “res cogitans”, or “thinking beings”; “I think, therefore I am”. Self awareness and the ability to reflect, reason and use logic is a distinguishing factor of humans, but it’s potentially a misguided notion of what it means to be human if placed as the defining aspect of our humanity. We are lovers before we are thinkers.
The greatest longing of the human heart is love. We want to love and to be loved. We want to be enraptured with something or someone that hopefully returns the favor, because that lifts us above ourselves and allows us to experience our higher nature, that spiritual part of us. And this love that we long for is at its depths a longing for intimacy and deep knowing.
Evelyn Underhill in her book on practical mysticism states that to truly know something is to unite with it. So loving is knowing and knowing is fusion; love is fusion. This kind of knowing through uniting is the ultimate act of love that we long for. At our core we want to love and to know and to be loved and known.
This is why the “Logos”, the Word became incarnate. God became man in the Christian tradition so that He could show the way of union and love. He displayed the ultimate act of knowing by emptying Himself and becoming man to unite with us. God became man so that man could become divine.
Getting in touch with this desire is, I believe, the point of silence and meditation and why religions and spiritual traditions have maintained those as the core of their practice and experience. It helps us to access our subconscious where the real us lies. James Smith also argues that these deepest longings of the heart are a kind of, “subconscious desire that operates without our thinking about it.”
When we consistently settle the stimuli that cover up our spirits, we gradually uncover that desire. Silence is like fuel to the flame of our infinite desire for transcendence and union — the longer we sit in it, the louder it gets.
Ruth Haley Barton says it like this, “You are like a jar of river water all shaken up. What you need is to sit still long enough so that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear.” This was an invitation to “be still and know” beyond my addiction to noise, words, people, and performance-oriented activity.” Silence connects us to the core of our being and makes decibel room for the screaming, even agonizing desire for love that has been covered up by so many other frequencies and by the disordered desires of the heart.
Speaking of our disordered desires, this is what the New Testament calls “the flesh”. It’s like our animalistic narure that has not been rightly integrated into our being and so becomes a master over us. It’s not innate badness, but rather misdirected or perhaps degenerated goodness. When our innate human desires are bent and misused they lead to frustration. Buddhism recognizes that suffering stems from frustrated desire and seeks to solve the problem in a similar way as contemplative Christianity by the neutralizing of our emotional programs. This is basically an ordering of our disordered desires.
Some interpret it as the negation of desire, but that can be misleading I think, and even more humanizing and helpful than simply the negation of desire is the transformation and right ordering of it. This is an aspect of what the mystics have always taught as detachment/non-attachment, or as Ignatius called it, “indifference”. Many definitions could be given but I would define it simply as a centered state of being in which you hold all of life with open hands and in which nothing can add or subtract to your joy and contentedness. You’re not negating your desire and stripping yourself of that core piece of your humanity, but you’re not overly attaching to transitory things because doing so gives them the power to crush you without a moment’s notice. Non-attachment means a life lived in full enjoyment and appreciation of life with the ability to also drop it all in a second if need be. It seems paradoxical but hopefully by the end of this it will make a bit more sense.
One such example of practice towards this kind of detachment is Centering Prayer — an updated method of what has historically been called contemplative prayer. It helps us to heal our unconscious minds, to rightly orient our desires, to practically practice detachment, and to mature or neutralize our “emotional programs for happiness”, as Thomas Keating calls them, to no longer be in control. This kind of restful prayer/meditation of letting go helps us to sort through our desires; it helps us to reach down into the substrate of our beings and to bring to light our deepest longings that we’ve been blind to. It also allows us to recognize all the ways in which we have allowed those desires to be warped by looking for their fulfillment in all of the wrong places and in all of the wrong ways. In short, one of its many benefits is that it helps us to get into our unconscious mind to sort out our desires.
C.S. Lewis’ well worn quote on desire hits home as he says, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.” Detachment means not mistaking the echo or mirage for the real thing.
Everything in life that brings happiness, joy, pleasure, is for our benefit but can only be rightly enjoyed when we look beyond the shadows of fulfillment to the true thing. What in this world could we possibly find to quench the infinite desire of our souls? Only infinite love can reach the depths of infinite desire. In a beautiful way beyond description, God who is Love, is able to tread into that sacred space within us and plumb the depths of our very being. It is there that He entangles Himself in our own intricate web of desires and this can create a meaningful and lasting impression upon our hearts that spills into our daily experience.
The goal of the mystic is not altered states of consciousness or the mastery of esoteric teachings, but is a life pervaded with pure awareness; awareness of the infinite source of love and beauty that resides in all things and most of all in our own selves — body, mind and soul. The mystic is simply one who is not comfortable replacing doctrine, dogma or teaching for experience, but who must by irreversible conviction unite with Reality to the best of their ability and know it beyond rationality.
One simple transcendent moment can wake us up and bring us into contact with a deeper reality with which to unite, whether it comes through prayer or from looking at a newborn child, whether from a highly charged emotional experience with another or from simply getting lost in a sunrise. Those experiences remind us that there’s something deep and meaningful to life. It’s a way of getting at that “spiritual” part of us for lack of better words. But they also hopefully remind us that nothing we experience fully satisfies us or makes us supremely happy. This is why Christianity has framed detachment only alongside attachment to God. Practicing detachment helps us to become indifferent towards that which is prone to change so that we can attach at our core to that which does not change — the fundamental reality of the love of God.
When our loves and desires are rightly ordered and have a right attachment to this Love as a foundation, then all the other things in life can be incorporated back into that hierarchy of love and can be enjoyed even more. The detached heart is the only heart that is truly capable of enjoying life to the full. Notice that those who live with the most gratitude and consistent happiness are those who would be content to live with much or with little, here or there, in the ideal or in the less than ideal.
I have a tendency to notice a nagging feeling of frustration when I behold a beautiful scene in nature or when I’m in a situation that should by all means call for a response of emotional depth, because much of the time I just don’t feel a whole lot. In these moments it’s as if life has become dull and uninteresting; it’s kind of like something is broken in my heart. I feel guilty for thinking “it’s not good enough. It still doesn’t do the trick”. Im sure there’s lots of reasons why I’m messed up and you can feel free to psychoanalyze me later. But I recognize that at least in part, that happens in me when my loves are disordered and when I am looking for anything I can grasp to bring me happiness. The key word there is “grasp”. The wise sage of Ecclesiastes comments that life is vanity! Searching for happiness is like “grasping at the wind”. Each new experience leaves you with a need for more to be able to satisfy and snowball effects into a search for the light of love in darker places than we thought we’d ever find ourselves.
Grasping is the antithesis of detachment. As long as we’re grasping we will find nothing that reaches past our superficial surface. But through detachment, we can accept and enjoy all of life in a non possessive manner. Desire can be a great guide if rightly ordered, but a terrible master if disordered. Life is a battle of desires.
Practice:
Try making time for a 20 minutes session to pray or meditate with a posture of surrender to what is and of letting go. Descend with the mind into the heart as the Desert Fathers put it, and let your thoughts come and go without judgment while continually bringing yourself back to your heart’s longing. What is it that you are TRULY looking for? Hear the Divine asking, “what is it that you want me to do for you?” Do you have doubts that this perfect love exists and can meet you at the depth of your heart? This is normal. Sit with that as long as you need and keep in that place. Recognize that doubt without judgement still. And if you’re inclined to, ask your heart to simply try to trust a little bit.
Open your spirit to what is called grace, and let it carry you beyond where you can carry yourself. At some not so distant place down the road, if you keep at this practice, you will be be able to freefall in trust into the arms of the source of infinite Love and rest; into the safest place you could ever be — the presence of God, newly found and uncovered in your own heart. It has been there all along, we just haven’t been trained to look for it.
