Detachment

Perhaps the most difficult quiet-corner concept to grasp is that of detachment. Yet it is the key to freedom and peace. The most important question you can ask yourself each time you recognize an attachment to something is "How important is it?"

We all form attachments - to people, places, and things. Fear is most likely the underlying force here - fear of not having enough, fear of being alone, fear of failure, and so on. And our attachments, while we think they are normal and warranted, cause us a great deal of pain. We tend to think that we have control over them. Only when we lose them, or as we struggly to hold on to them, do we learn that we never had them in the first place.

Your quiet corner is the perfect place to sit with yourself and review your attachments, what they mean to you and what it would mean to lose them. It is here that you can learn how to detach yourself from people and things in your life, and to do it with love. And rather than taking you further from the ones you love and making you cold and distant (which is what I once thought detachment was all about), it will bring you closer to people and will teach you how to express love without asking for anything in return. Because you will no longer have an emotional investment in how other people behave, they will gain the freedom to express their love as they need to. And you will learn to love them as they are.

Detaching yourself from the things in your life does not mean doing without or discarding money and nice things. It simply means trying not to make the attainment of such things an end in itself and not allowing them to become all important and the focus of your life. Collect things around you if you must, but be ready to let go of them at any moment with no regrets. Detach from these things before you lose them, and having or not having them will be one and the same.

~Find a Quiet Corner: Inner peace, Anytime Anywhere by Nancy O' Hara pp 81-2