(Principles are basic truths that, when applied, cause success to come to you easier and quicker.)
How can you be detached if you are compassionate? And how can you be compassionate if you are detached? Sounds like an impossibility. This is not an easy principle to get. In fact, it can’t be explained or understood through logic. Rather, it is a place to come from in your interactions with others.
When you care about people and want the best for them, and feel compassion for their situations, there is a natural tendency to get enmeshed in their “stuff”. Their stuff becomes your stuff. And that’s the key. Get yourself cleaned up first. Get your needs met and healed. Get complete with your past. Get clear about your values and life purpose. Having done so you won’t use others to make yourself feel whole. That is what will then allow you to feel fully compassionate about others and yet be unattached from them. Not from them, from their stuff.
But that’s trying to explain it. Practice detached compassion and see for yourself what a strong and loving place it is. Then try to tell someone else!
Copyright 2000 Steve Straus. All rights reserved.