By Gonny Many spiritual paths, especially Buddhism, teach that attachment is the root of suffering. We cling to things, people, even our own body and ego, and that clinging makes us afraid. The answer they give is detachment: learning to let go.
A Course in Miracles looks at it in its own way. It says: you are not attached to anything real. You are attached to illusions, to a dream-self, to a world that is only a projection. Detachment is not about renouncing life but about remembering what you already are.
I like to think of it as a drop of water. Right now, I imagine myself to be a separate drop…a little me, with my name, my body, my story. But in truth, I am never apart from the ocean. I only believe I am. Death, then, is not losing myself. It is the end of the illusion of being a separate drop. I never stopped being the ocean.
And yet, when people hear this, they get afraid. “But where do I go? What happens to me? I want to experience twelve dimensions first! I don’t want to disappear back into the ocean!” That fear is understandable. It is the ego’s panic at the thought of losing itself, loosing an identification.. But the ego is not what we are.
In the present moment, what you “are” seems very real: your body, your story, your desires. But that identity is temporary.
The past you remember, the future you imagine, even the people you think of as alive or dead…
all of it are thoughts placed next to this small self in the Now.
The Course reminds us: what is real is eternal, changeless, and cannot die. That is your true Self.
So what is our work here? Not to make this drop stronger, shinier, or more important. Our work is to see through the illusion of separation.
Every moment of forgiveness, every willingness to let go of fear, every pause to choose again is a step back into the awareness of the Ocean.
And here is the comfort: nothing real can be lost. The drop was never truly separate. Our true Being has never left the Source. Everything else…the clinging, the fear, the thousands of different stories about what we are, what we are made of, …is simply a tale of wandering away.
In the end, detachment is not about losing, but about remembering. Remembering that you are not just a drop, you are the Ocean itself.
With love and light,
G.