the role of detachment in self-realization

adversarial dynamics are key to developing not just awareness of self but the power to transform limits into new gates to unbroken horizons. during times of interpersonal conflict, an able-ness to resist the temptation to counter-offensives, retaliation and revenge-schemes is the arena within which real detachment can be practiced.

only when you can take the lash of outright slander and not flinch, not even feel the stroke in its harm intention, only then does one have the chance to exercise this potent skill of practical magic. feigning detachment when circumstances permit, or as a pretense masking a more chronic indifference and lack of engagement with reality, these might con one into thinking a sort of personal liberation has been attained. unfortunately these are the sorts of false consolations that verily lead to the brittle and smug self-assurance which prevents the deconstruction and shedding of old skins and distorted lenses.

the art of war sagely advises that one should never completely humiliate or strip down the dignities of the adversary if peace, security, and non-violence are core aims. sometimes, when the opponent is powerful in their reach but impossibly mesmerized by self-justifying perceptions, a temporary theater must be constructed to lead the opponent into the delusion most suited to maintaining the ego's cherished immunity, protecting it from inconvenient truths.

this means elevating your resonances above the level where the conflict chooses to play, turning the other cheek, and failing to actively obstruct anyone's dissembling and falsehood schemes. instead, the holy trickster empowers the opponent with what appears to be an inevitable and assured endgame victory. thusly distracted by their own unchecked certitudes, the easiest disengagement is to be had, for you've left them as you've found them. in their drama. because other people are not your business. meanwhile the hardest practice of all, not returning fire with fire, poison with poison, or passing on exponentially increasing pain and karma, has been faced, engaged, and profited from. this is the road less travelled where you will always find kin, the hunters everywhere of wisdom, love and freedom.

Until you've found pain, you won't reach the cure
Until you've given up life, you won't unite with
the supreme soul
Until you've found fire inside yourself, like the Friend,
You won't reach the spring of life.
Rumi ♥