The Mechanics of Detachment

Detachment is a central concept in many living faiths—and certainly in all mystical traditions. It has an eastern flavor, but it is present in the teaching of Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, and in Sufism. “In the world but not of it” is a Persian saying. Detachment plays a role in secular culture, but there it is called concentration—which isn’t detachment but is an important aspect of it. It is anathema in commercial and pop culture.

In my own experience, being concentrated or centered produces a kind of indifference—not the negative kind but more akin to neutrality. The various practices intended to produce it, directly or as a by-product, all involve a shift of attention from “the world,” and that includes the body, to something higher. One common form of it is self-remembering, thus remaining aware, in the midst of everything, that I am still there, acting, seeing, reacting; thus it is a kind of separation of the self from the flow. The opposite is usually called identification. In the latter state the self is absent, entirely absorbed by the action, of whatever kind: physical, mental, emotional. For all practical purposes we aren’t really there—as agents. Detachment implies an act of the will. Simply being bored with something doesn’t mean that we’re detached. We’re then attached to boredom.

Paradoxically, being detached while acting makes the action much more efficient. Frustrations with some necessary or desirable engagement will sometimes trigger detachment. It wakes us up. Then we say: “Le’s see now…”—meaning, let’s see how to approach this problem most intelligently. At that moment, if the detachment is strong enough, all desire will be suspended—thus indifference will be present. With it comes a degree of freedom in which the options available will become more visible. Our intelligence will be enabled. Our judgment will be clear. The action chosen will be the right one. When detachment isn’t present, flailing results, and the results tend to get worse and worse.

In situations where the frustration is triggered by the environment at large—thus by definition things we can’t do anything about—if we can immediately reach detachment, we’ll be careful to ignore the event rather than let frustration grow in circumstances where no practical response is available. Scotching that seedling of frustration will save us energy—better used in other ways.

Constant practice of detachment causes it to surface when needed. It’s not a sexy sort of thing. It would be hard to market. Those drawn to spiritual practices by the promise of magical powers are rapidly frustrated. If wanting is the problem, what am I doing here? It is paradoxical to aim for a state in which a kind of sovereign indifference to everything is the result. But it’s very efficient. The alternative is to take our chances at the gaming tables of ordinary life: exultation in victory, despair in loss, uncertainty, the absence of freedom and control….

Dissipate or Concentrate

One of the more elegant but ultimately meaningless descriptions of “life” is as the activity of dissipative structures. The phrase belongs to Ilya Prigogine, the Russian-born Belgian physicist; he won the 1980 Nobel Prize for this description. So what is it that living structures dissipate? Energy. Prigogine studied what are called open systems, thus systems in motion but in disequilibrium. A river is such a system—a lake is not. He discovered that if you apply shocks to such a system, by further disarranging it, that intervention causes matter to organize itself. Let’s put a big boulder into the middle of a shallow, fast-flowing brook. The boulder compresses water between the bank and itself. Turbulence results. If the water keeps on flowing with the same force as before, vortices will form. They will retain their shapes while the water is flowing. Turbulence is water’s way of shedding, dissipating an excess of energy. In a manner of speaking, those vortices are alive—and remain so until the energy, produced by water and gravity, diminish. From such beginnings have arisen concepts such as the “self-organizing” character of matter. Life processes, therefore, are defined as dissipative structures at the chemical level. We are merely vortices in matter of a certain complex kind.

The meaningless character of this description arises because it views life as merely a byproduct of matter in the presence of energy. But life, of course, has a certain tricky originality as well. Vortices may form in brooks, but they don’t reproduce—certainly not by extraordinary complex routes requiring two sexes and the combination of two sets of DNA; or, at the simpler level, by separating twin strands of DNA and then, rebuilding them, parceling them out, one to one and the other to the other half of a dividing cell.

But life, surely, is a great feeder. Yes. It gobbles energy. It sheds, dissipates it not only in maintaining itself but in all kinds of other more entertaining activities galore—like texting with the thumb while driving a car. And this activity, the continuous use of energy, is certainly one description, and an accurate one, of what life does.

What’s in that energy? Suppose we make a slight adjustment to the conventional description. Suppose there is in energy—hidden within it somewhere—a subtle form of stuff that we need to develop ourselves as souls. Then, finding ourselves at the bottom of some vast dark cosmic chasm—probably because we strayed—and finding ourselves quite starved of the nutrition we really need, we began a process of concentrating energy in just the right way to extract that subtle substance from the coarse stuff reaching us from the sun—in order to help us climb out of the pit. And chemical civilization is born. In this slight adjustment of the materialistic view of life—without in any way changing its description—we introduce an intervention, our own. It is we who drop the bolder into that rapidly flowing brook—not mere chance. It is because we are involved, agents with a purposive nature, that life display a few more curious innovations, like reproduction, that we do not observe in the inorganic ranges.

Dissipate or Concentrate? What if our task is both. We dissipate the energy to get more that still holds the vital stuff we need to take wing out of the valley of the shadow.

More Notes on Anxiety

This dimension, and half-awake living along, produces anxiety in me directly in proportion to experiencing ordinary animal awareness. Strange. Poor animals. Too many impending events: a trip up north, a not-too-distance family parting, a septic-to-city sewer transition in the family, workmen doing plastering in this house, the demolition of our backyard, the building of a new garage… All this, vaguely felt, impending, produces the anxiety I feel. It is likely to diminish as I write this, as I take on a more adult stance. And that is little other than a state of concentration.

Concentration seems to open up channels to the influx of a higher energy. But is that really the case? Let me look. The first consequence of concentration is simply calm. Something neutralizes the stimuli that otherwise cause the anxiety. But what is anxiety? It seems to be caused by a barrage of reflexive inner “movements”; they are starts, beginnings of reactions; but they are immediately stopped again because no action can actually start: all of these stimuli come from the future. Still, the body echoes each impulse by producing chemicals—and just as rapidly terminates their production only to start again when the next thought triggers the same foolishly anticipatory and automatic reaction.

This process is interrupted when I focus my attention. What I here call a “higher energy” is simply the awakened presence of a faculty corresponding to what David Bohm called the unconditioned order, thus the order of “agency.” What really happens is that ordinary energy, wasted by mechanical reactions, is no longer wasted, becomes available, and a sensation of higher potency becomes perceptible.

(Here, parenthetically, I note that my use of the concept of energy—higher, lower—is usually sloppy. The higher does not belong to the material order where energy properly belongs.)

Over and over, time and time again, I’ve noticed that anxiety disappears as soon as I become conscious. Nothing changes. Impending events are still there but are no longer threatening. Not surprisingly, I’m never anxious about unpleasant medical procedures on the day when they occur, only in anticipation. States of anxiety, it seems to me, are states of inattention—and readily distinguishable from states of concentrated tension on the one hand and calm control on the other. Neither has that tendency of rattling us. Too bad it is so difficult always to be attentive; turbulent distraction certainly doesn't help me focus. There is a great temptation to float along pleasantly on the stream of time in childish bliss—but the stream sometimes becomes a little rough.

Pondering Action

In a comment on “Pondering Desolation,” Monique wonders why the life of action is so distracting and compelling—and why it produces imbalances with undesirable results. Good points. Her comment reminded me that life on the frontier, and here of course I mean life on the borderzone, has its own solution to the demand for “action in the world.” We are, after all, supposed to be in the world if not of it. The Sufi tradition is but one of others that calls for realizing spiritual values in the world—but it is a tradition that gives this matter emphasis. In that tradition withdrawal into solitudes—and celibacy, for that matter—are seen as temporary practices to strengthen the individual for the life of action.

I would also note here that in Asia the martial arts, and related practices derived from it, like Tai chi chuan, directly link physical with spiritual action. And there is also the body of useful western observations about types of personalities—inner- and outer-directed (introverts and extroverts), sometimes linked to body types (somatotypes). This last concept was developed by the psychologist William Herbert Sheldon and studied at Yale. Sheldon proposed three body types called endomorphs, mesomorphs, and ectomorphs, roughly associated with personality types that are gregarious-social, active-muscular-athletic, and inward-sensitive-cerebral. People are, or tend toward, one or the other of these. Thus we may be drawn into the social whirl or the world of action by our own temperament. But beneath our temperaments we are all souls, and ways of life that let us express our given natures at the highest form have been developed over time.

I’ve always felt that the Chinese concept of chi, rudely rendered as life force, is perhaps the key to the spiritual life—no matter what our constitution. Four strangers, all from different parts of the world—in a time before English became a world language—met at a tavern and decided to journey together. Some days later they came across an orchard, and all four cried out in delight. One saw cherries, another one les cerise, a third one die kirschen, a fourth called them cseresnye. They saw the same fruit—a sweet red berry with a stone in the middle. The Asian chi or qi, ki, or gi is another’s baraka, the third person’s grace, a fourth traveler’s prana, and so on.

Why does chi flow more readily in the desolation of the desert, on the peak of rocky mountains? Because the distractions of the world have been minimized. Our genuine happiness derives from increasing and concentrating the flow of grace; unhappiness rises when this flow is rapidly dispersed or blocked by endless distractions. The modern error is to confuse baraka with ordinary life energy of the sort we get from carbohydrates. If it were only that, mere over-eating would make us saints. The wisdom of the traditions lies in recognizing that this energy is of another dimensionality, above that of the coarser kind. It is subtle but, when present, of tremendous potency. In very concentrated form it will cure ills spontaneous and more, much more…

The key to spiritualizing action seems to be concentration. The key to concentration is detachment—not in the sense of withdrawal but in the sense of presence. This demands the cultivation of a peculiar sort of duality within ourselves. We must be present to ourselves while simultaneously attending to the action before us. This may sound weird and contradictory, but it isn’t. What we must detach from is identification with the constant upwelling of emotional reaction to anything and everything. It is that automatic commentary of our habit selves—sometimes a whisper, sometimes a shouting, sometimes rage, sometimes hysteria—which actually distracts us. Action only requires seeing the facts, understanding them, selecting the right action—and then doing it. Without commentary. When the phone rings just as we start typing a sentence, the mind shouts, God dammit! I hope that’s not…whatever. A centered self, a concentrated self, a self that has prepared itself in the morning with appropriate meditation—renewed at intervals—will simply…pick up the telephone. The three dots I placed there stand for an inward pause, a conscious breath to suppress the shouting; it’s a reminder.

Yes, yes, already. But it’s hard. — And it is. But in a real sense the distractions are all internal. What’s out there is just the bombardment of facts. The distraction arises when we let them—distract us. From our intention. Our intention to act. We want to focus on something—and therefore, interrupted, we lose our focus. The trick is not to lose our focus even in the midst of interruptions. The result of this, if assiduously cultivated, is that the atmosphere will cool. The mind will become more disciplined. Slowly. Gradually. The flow of chi will increase, less of it will be blown away into the winds of emotion. We will become more efficient. The lower self is in many ways quite like an animal and requires long and tedious training—and retraining. And again.

My own experience is that practices of this type wear out after a while. As I succeed in organizing my own action better, as things calm down, I tend to ease up on the discipline and then over days I gradually slip back into bad habits. But the upside is that each succeeding effort is more successful, and even in these matters habits do build, not least the habit of just clearing the desk when I feel myself getting hysterical—putting the To Do list aside, overcoming the terror and panic of doing so—and beginning all over again with a session of reminders and a forcible recall of what it’s all about. It works—if we do. We learned that last motto, years ago, from Laura Huxley.

I’ll have more to say on this subject. The whole reality of chi and grace has many more interesting aspects. The teachings of Montessori were centered on natural concentration as a “normalizing” phenomenon. I’ll get to it. It’s on the To Do list.

Time, Stress, and Concentration

I note that we use “time” as a projection for internal states—as in saying, “God, this is a stressful time” or “I had the time of my life” or “There isn’t time for anything.”

Now I am stressed when I feel conflict. And not having time simply means overload. Too many conflicting demands swirl around like knives tossed up into the air by a stage performer. They threaten me. They might cut me if I don’t catch them in time, and here comes another, and a third is already falling again. Yikes!

It surprises me always how little time it takes me to get tense and irritated when I’m in a postal line with nine people ahead of me, each groaning under a mound of packages—and the postal clerks are having a cozy little chat while the people in line are steaming in silent fury. The other day I was in such a line when the idea for a funny poem occurred to me. I reached for a form that had some white space on it and started to jot lines—suddenly unaware of waiting. And then, when it was my turn, I put the sheet away feeling a slight irritation. Having to buy my stamps interrupted the fun time I was having looking for the fitting rhyme. Totally subjective.

Time doesn’t move at all. We live in eternity. What we call time is the perception of motion. We slice and dice time; we measure eternity by the motion of some mechanisms, solar or tiny, the machine on my wrist. In contented states, absorbed in some task, uninterrupted, time disappears. And, time and time again (I can’t avoid the word) after such a period ends, I take a deep breath and sigh. The sigh marks my return from eternity back into that much more hectic something I’ve sometimes, quite inaccurately, labeled “time-as-motion.” I could also talk of it as time-as-stress, time-as-indecision, dead time (as in waiting), and other terms that ultimately reduce to “I am out-of-sorts.” I never feel time when I am resolutely going about some task, when nothing interferes, when I am in the flow of things. But let the phone ring! It’s just a sound, but it feels as if someone had rudely pushed me.

I’ve discovered long ago that concentration can banish stress and tension. Depending on the stress, depending on the tension, this can take a little time. Twenty minutes are usually sufficient if the will is there. Concentration centers the mind. But where is that center? It is in eternity, in simple duration. To be out of “time-as” is also to be, oddly enough, out of the body. The reason why the ringing of the phone is as irritating as it is is because the body reflexively responds—faster than the mind. The body asserts itself and drags the mind from its point of focus. It moves the mind. It can do so because, alas, we are embodied. The phone can also produce the opposite effect. When we are anxiously brooding, waiting for news, we are centered in the body, our consciousness submerged in emotional turmoil. And then the phone finally rings. Alert. All is well. Hope springs up. We rush to answer. We sink back despondently when it is our Honda dealer’s automated call telling us that Precious needs to come in for its maintenance.

Concentration can break the spell of time time-as-motion. I know that. But the paradox is that in states of stress and tension, the obvious solution doesn’t automatically pop into my mind. The feeling must become quite irritating to rise to the level of consciousness when the solution finally occurs—and when it occurs, that moment itself is a moment of concentration. Used wisely, it solves the problem. But this demands an act of the will resisted by the organism. To gain concentration when we are harried always requires that we do something that isn’t exactly on the agenda. The list is long, the day is short—and now he wants me to sit down and spend twenty minutes writing in the diary or counting my breaths as I sit with my eyes closed? Forget that! Forget that, and it’ll be one of those days. Proceed to do the right thing, and the day will start to flow. The list will seem a little thing. The adult is back. The child we are is calmed and charmed again. Stress seeps away. Tension melts…

Concentration

It strikes me that one of the distinguishing characteristics of being human, thus of consciousness and self-awareness, is the ability to concentrate at will. Animals are quite capable of concentration too, but it is not under their voluntary control. I observe this on every walk I take, especially this time of year. The squirrels are in the final phase of their preparations for the coming winter. They’re all over the place. And I can see how the environment directs their attention and compels their action. Every squirrel, every time will climb the nearest tree or hide under the nearest bush if, as I walk by them, I get close enough to them.

Voluntary action is the hallmark of transcendence. It requires a kind of separateness from the physical. The separation is rarely very great, but there it is. It is that “cubic millimeter” of separation Carlos Castaneda attributed to his real or invented sorcerer-guru, Don Juan. I am, of course, not talking about reflexive actions; controlling them requires extraordinary training. Nor do I refer to spontaneous heroism in situations of sudden crisis—self-defense or defense of the child. I once saw the strangest sight. It was a chipmunk “standing up” to one of our cats. It had been cornered; there it was, about to be killed. It rose on its hind legs and made warding off motions at the cat while making a hissing sort of sound. The cat, for whatever reasons—perhaps my immediate proximity distracted it—did not immediately act. The chipmunk then absconded. But for a moment, heroically, it was ready to face down the vast predator that over-loomed it. I don’t mean that sort of thing. We—whatever that word means—are tightly woven into our bodies. What is amazing is that we can indeed over-come the material at will.

What this suggests to me is that culture—personal as well as collective—will manifest itself in forms that signal concentration and detachment. By contrast, decadence will manifest itself as an increase in spontaneity, informality, and distraction. My classing spontaneity with decadence will rub some people wrong—rubs me wrong too, you might say. But I’ll say more about that in a moment. Processes that proceed in an automated way, stimulus followed by response, resemble the natural, the lower, the physical. Processes triggered by intentions, where the intention follows and guides the development—these are of a higher order.

The life process itself, as I see it, is the action of something high gathering strength and gradually freeing itself from its entanglement in the lower. Therefore life has direction. It is teleological. It manifests in increasing levels of order—and this order opposes, counters the random arrangement of the physical. Chance operates in the material plane, mind creates order. In humans the first possibilities of genuine detachment occur, and these manifest as concentration and conscious volition.

The process, in the human realm, has a cyclic pattern. Thus it manifests as cultural development followed by exhaustion and decay. Oddly enough our very success in organizing matter leads to decay. The pressures of necessity ease up. In consequence we relax our concentration, let go of our formalities, and permit ourselves to be distracted. Distraction requires much less effort. It is going with the flow, as it were. Ours is an age of exhaustion—and let’s not be deceived by our fantastic wealth, brilliant technology, and celebrated diversity. The whole structure of life today is organized to maximize distraction. That is what a culture of consumption produces. Things, things, things. Faster and faster. Flicker and flicker. Instant gratification is followed by equally instant dissatisfaction. Which calls for an immediate fix. And so on it goes. By contrast any activity that requires sustained, focused attention will appear as boring, old-fashioned, out-of-it rather than with-it. I maintain three blogs. Of these one is amusing, sharp-witted, and stimulating. One is cultural in focus but entertaining on a higher level. And this one is much more concentrated. Which one has the least readership? You guessed it. This one. Why? It requires concentration to follow.

Now a note about spontaneity. There is a lower kind which is reflexive. And then there is the higher kind. It is the higher kind that we actually admire and see manifested in the great works of art. But that kind of spontaneity arises from a great surplus of power built up over long periods of sustained effort, mastering higher forms of expression. And when it begins to operate, it looks effortless and yet produces wonderfully ordered structures. That spontaneity is valuable. The other kind even the drunk displays in various amusing and destructive forms.