The Four Laws of Detachment for Emotional Release.

Within the approach to personal growth and spirituality, the term detachment is the key to achieving happiness. It means being able to overcome the barriers of our comfort zone to stop needing, depending, and living in fear of losing dimensions to which we cling too much. Because only when we are able to defeat the ego will we finally stop suffering.

Let's try to explain for a moment what happiness is for us. Some would say that happy is someone who has assets, a good partner, money in the bank. All of this, no doubt, covers many of our most basic needs. However, do these dimensions provide a genuine sense of well-being? In fact, the most precise definition of what happiness is could not be simpler: happiness is the absence of fear, it is not knowing what anxiety is, for example.

‘It basically means knowing how to love, value and get involved in things from a more balanced and healthy point of view, freeing us from the excesses that chain and bind us. It cuts our wings’.

Practicing detachment is therefore the first step in reaching that state. It is allowing us to be freer, lighter, less attached to what we have or what we lack. It's living with your heart without having to compulsively need anything or anyone. At the same time, it also means being able and knowing how to give oneself to others with authenticity and without pressure.

The emotional release generated by detachment offers us the option to live more honestly. It is then that the option to grow, to advance with the knowledge of facts arises. Without harming anyone, without anyone, too, surrounding us, camouflaged with the currents of passionate, filial or even maternal love.

So, let's learn to put these simple laws about detachment into practice…

First law of detachment: you are responsible for yourself.

The first law of detachment invokes a basic principle of personal growth: responsibility. Let's think: no one is going to remove for us all the stones we find on the way. Nor will anyone breathe for us or volunteer to carry our sorrows or pains.

Each of us is the architect of our own existence. And something like that implies courage. It means that we must distance ourselves from the opinions of others, from the need to be validated, from waiting for the approval of others to move forward with our decisions, dreams or projects.

We are free people, ready to create the destiny we deem appropriate.

Therefore, being fully aware of this right to be the builder of your own destiny, keep these dimensions in mind:

• Don't put your own happiness in someone else's pocket. Do not imagine the idea that to be happy in this life it is essential to find a partner who loves you, or to always have the recognition of your family. Loneliness is sometimes the best companion to promote our self-fulfillment.

• If the barometer of your satisfaction and happiness is what others give you, you will achieve nothing but suffering. The reason? They will rarely cover all your needs.

• Cultivate your own happiness, feel responsible, mature, be aware of your decisions and their consequences, choose for yourself and never let your well-being depend on the opinion or advice of others.

Second law of detachment: living in the present, accepting, assuming reality.

In this life, nothing is eternal, nothing remains, everything flows and resumes its path, weaving that natural order that is sometimes difficult for us to assume. People are often focused on everything that happened in the past that somehow now becomes a burden that alters our present.

Often, we are so “attached” to all those events that happened yesterday that we forget the most important thing: living. We put all our attention on those family disagreements, on the trauma that surrounds and conditions us, on that loss, that emotional failure or that insurmountable frustration… All of these are anchors that hold us, that hold us in our feet. and hooks into our soul.

Detachment is also joining forces to look at the present and allow us to heal wounds. We must encourage acceptance, assume realities and not resist certain evidence. Furthermore, sometimes we have no choice but to forgive and even forgive ourselves. Only then will we feel more liberated, ready to value with all our senses the “here and now”, this gift where your true opportunity is.

Third law of detachment: promote your freedom and allow others to be free too.

‘Accept that freedom is the fullest, most complete and healthiest way to enjoy life, to understand it in all its immensity’

Detachment is not cutting ties or establishing ties marked by emotional coldness. It's the opposite. We are facing a dimension where we can learn to dispel fears in order to love more authentically and respectfully. It is knowing how to give and allow yourself to receive without pressure, without blind needs, without anguish or with the eternal fear of being abandoned. It's preferring without needing the other.

Also, another thing to remember about letting go is that we are not obligated to be responsible for the lives of others. In this sense, there is no lack of those who, for example, are eager to find a partner to escape loneliness or even to heal old wounds from yesterday. Let's make it clear that none of us have an obligation to be a hero or rescue others to heal our loneliness or pain caused by old relationships. This kind of bond only creates suffering.

Intense attachments are never healthy, think, for example, of those obsessive parents who go too far to protect their children and keep them from maturing, from moving forward safely to explore the world.

The need for “detachment” is vital in these cases, where each one must go beyond the limits of certainty to learn from the unexpected, from the unknown.

Fourth law of detachment: accept that losses will happen sooner or later.

In all Buddhist and spiritual currents, the idea of ​​impermanence is present. We speak of that dimension in which we are forced to understand that in this life nothing lasts, that nothing can be contained eternally. Relationships and even material things change, mature and often even disappear. Let us therefore assume the idea of ​​change, absence and even loss as a vital law to which we cannot turn a blind eye.

Some people will leave forever, children will grow up, some friends will cease to be friends and some loves will leave the warmth of our hand… However, much more will come. Because life is change, but also movement, and all that is part of detachment. And, as such, we must learn to accept it in order to face it with greater integrity. With greater strength. But what will never change is your ability to love: always start with yourself.

In conclusion, if you want to start practicing the four laws of detachment, start by identifying the emotions and feelings that generate the object of attachment (which could be a person, a situation, or an object). Then ask yourself what purpose it serves in your life, and always keep that in mind. So be grateful for what he has done for you and let him go.