Musings: The Dance Between Desire and Detachment

“How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire.”  ~ Belva Plain

Those of us on a spiritual journey are often presented a paradox.

There is plenty of literature and advice from sages, authors and from the scriptures that emphasize the importance of having passionate desire combined with strong intentions, clear visualizations and an unwavering perseverance to achieve our goals and desires.

From Matthew: “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” We American are a hard-charging, determined and adventurous lot, and we understand the achievement of the American dream requires hard work, a risk-taking mindset and a strong commitment. We are good at this – see what we have created in a short 240 years as the largest, strongest and the richest country in the world.

Yet this attachment to our desires can keep us preoccupied “like netted birds,” and often we can become obsessed with what it is we are desirous of accomplishing. This attachment to our desires and goals keep us from being present. As spiritual travelers we all know that happiness, peace, humility and bliss live in the present. John Lennon’s famous song Beautiful Boy says, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

On the other hand, there is plenty of contradictory advice that says, “Let go, let God.” Be in the flow, and your life will be happier, easier and more satisfying. We are also taught by Buddha that desire and greed is actually the cause of all suffering. Desires create attachments and expectations, and when things don’t go our way, we can be left somewhere we do not want with results far from our wants. This is suffering. So what is the answer?

Going steadfastly for our goals and yet not being attached to our desires? This indeed is a dilemma and a paradox many of us including yours truly have had to face in the past.

In my spiritual quest for many years, I focused on trying to be present. Like many of you have, I too have read books to learn how to be present including Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” I found that being “present” was highly elusive. Sometime in my mediations, probably in the late 1990s I got the download: “Do not try to be in the present – focus on not being in your past or future.”

This was exciting, and like Archimedes, I almost ran out naked in the streets shouting “eureka!” If you can learn not to be in the past or future, by default you will BE IN THE PRESENT. If you find yourself in the past you are sweating over something that happened that is keeping you in resentment or guilt, and if you are in the future you are anxious and preoccupied or obsessed about some goal, result or desire you are trying to manifest.

At the time, I made sure I wrote in my journal every day for 30 days when I was NOT in the present. After 30 days when I looked at my journal I was amazed to see that I was never in the past but invariable always in the future.  

As an investment banker I am good at exit strategies that are in the future and pretty skilled at complex planning. This skill often kept me in the future working on my goals and desires. I found that I had healed my past through forgiveness. I have enjoyed great relationships with my family, my ex and her family. I have forged a healthy relationship with the person who killed my son. I’ve forged the same with his family. In other words I do not have an axe to grind with anyone. This awareness got me excited that I was hopefully halfway on the path of being always in the present.

In my book “The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit” – coauthored with Jillian Quinn – Chapter 19 is titled “The Dance Between Desire and Detachment” from which this musing was inspired. In it we write: “If you want to begin really acting from the wisdom of your own spirit, you must learn to embrace one of life’s most profound paradoxes: You must figure out how to combine passionate desire with dispassionate detachment.”

I received some insight around this from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2004.

I met the Dalai Lama at an engagement where 30 of us from around the globe were hosted by Pope John Paul at his summer palace is Castelgandolfo, Italy to engage in a 5-day conference titled “Synthesis Dialogues.” There, I was able to ask him how to not find myself often in the future.

His sage advice was: “Mr. Khamisa, you are fortunate because most people ask me how to resolve and heal their past, and I agree with you that forgiveness is a good way to heal your past as you have done. There is much advice on detachment in the Buddhist philosophy, and one of the ways not to be in the future is … while it is important to have strong desires and intentions to manifest what you are trying to achieve, it is best to add to your desire and goal intentions that if I am not able to manifest my goal or desire I want to manifest an alternative goal that is in the highest good for me, the other party and the Universe. In the event, you do get an alternative outcome than the one you desired, you have to have built your faith to a level that happily confirms that the outcome you actually received is indeed better for you than the one you desired.”

WOW!

That was very freeing, as the Universe never makes mistakes and will always manifest the best outcome for all the involved parties.

There is an ayat (verse) from the Koran that really gets to the heart of what it means to cultivate an attitude of detachment: “Man should propose, only Allah can dispose.”