The Concepts of Knowing & Being & How They Relate To Detachment
In our natural state, we interact with the world around us on a very surface level. In our mind, what we see is all there is. In other words, if it’s “out there” it’s real. But the truly real lies much deeper inside of each of us. This is the place I call “Knowing & Being.” It is accessed primarily through stillness but also a concept that others call detachment.
Detachment is the process of disidentification with our false perceptions of self. Perhaps our most readily identifiable association is what Eckhart Tolle terms the “voice in the head.” All of us have the inner voice that we use to dialog with ourselves. Sometimes that inner discussion is positive and purposeful as in when we are working on a project or trying to make a decision. In such cases, we are generally working through the various stages or weighing the merits back and forth of two possible solutions.
The unfortunate reality is that the inner dialog is often negative and hurtful in nature. We default to the voice and use it to bash ourselves with any number of negative comments. Contemplate that thought for a few moments: “We” take control of “our” inner voices in order to bash “ourselves.”
The idea is so important to understand that statement should be read again several times to see if something catches your attention that may have eluded you before. There are two different parties referenced within and yet our intent is that they both reference “us.” If we take control of our inner voices then we are not the inner voice. Yet potentially 99 out of 100 people, when asked, would probably say that they are the voice, that it is “them” talking.
That is how powerful attachment is. We have identified with it so long that we can no longer see any distance between the voice and us. How is this important? The voice is much more surface than us. It is easily manipulated in our confusion. The “us” that I am referring to is more primal and essential in nature. This deeper person is our Authentic Self and it is the place of pure Knowing and Being. Our Authentic Self understands in much deeper ways than with words as our inner voice does.
The voice is just a tool for interaction much like we use our hands and arms for interacting with the physical world. But we are not our physical bodies either. The body is decaying day by day and soon ceases—but we never cease. We are ultimately immortal, infinite in our duration, eternally alive. Just as it is easy to identify ourselves with our body so it is to errantly identify with our inner voice.
But that perpetual attachment foregos freedom. What is bondage but attachment to something that holds us back from being ourselves? As long as we are bound to our pseudo-self representations—our avatars—then our Authentic Selves are restrained and held captive too. And since the charade is so convincing, even to ourselves, most of us never realize we are in that state of bondage although we certainly feel the effects of the suffering.
True freedom in the spiritual sense comes with detachment from these identities. With the disidentification of things that are not self we then gain the ability to have our Authentic Self blossom. We can grow in the light of the sun when all that shaded us has been displaced.
Closing Thoughts and Questions
Feel free to journal your thoughts or leave a comment or comments below to generate further discussion:
- Take the next several moments and focus on your inner voice. Listen to everything it says. Don’t let it escape your attention. In doing so you will finally gain awareness of it.
- Try to still the voice. See if you can get it to stop. You might be amazed at how difficult that is—it’s so prevalent that once you are aware of it you might feel like it’s smothering you. But keep trying and you find you can silence it for a second or two. Try to hold that place and after you do, write down the feelings you notice.
- This space between the words is you. As you can hold this silence and start to “look around” you might feel a great peace. When I detach from my voice I actually feel my consciousness go somewhere deeper, like it is settling down below the surface. I like to think of this as “centering.” This is the place of Knowing & Being. Start to spend time here and answers will begin to flow for you. This is a great state to journal from and I suggest you try it now.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.