From Clement of Alexandria in the second century, to Meister Eckhart in the 13th, to Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th, the idea of spiritual indifference -- openness to the many manifestations of the will of God -- has been respected. There were many ways to live, not simply one, the spiritual theory taught, all of them good, some of them better than others from one moment to the next. The marrow of the spiritual life was determining which of life’s many possibilities were most suitable to the will of God in the present situation. The root of the exercise was "holy indifference," awareness of the multiple gifts of God and openness to all of them. This is a spirituality with enduring psychological value as well.
The isolation that marks any serious struggle is a call to recognize that life is full of gifts that come and go, come and go as we ourselves come and go through the many stages of living. Detachment from the idea that there is only one way for me to go through life joyfully is key. The pain of loss is a real and a present thing. It manacles my soul and breaks my heart, yes. But holy indifference -- detachment -- teaches me that there is no room for isolation, abandonment, death of the spirit when I lose one thing because I know that there is something else waiting for me in its place. If only I can allow myself to watch for it, to wait for it, to grasp it when it comes.
Designed to enable a person to regard all of life with an open mind and a willing heart, detachment -- holy indifference -- is the foundation of spiritual discernment. To discern is to choose between available options on the grounds that both are good but that one is more likely at this time to be preferable. It is the willingness to accept the idea that one option is more likely to result in growth at this time than the other, though both are good possibilities. Discernment and detachment are lifelines out of the pit of loss and the island of isolation to which it threatens to doom us.
Detachment teaches us to let go. Let go of unwavering answers. Let go of present achievements. Let go of life’s little hoards of trinkets. Let go of the now which is frozen in emotion for the sake of a future freed from old chains. It is the ability to see that there are many things of value in our lives, some of them more suited to one time than to another.
Discernment is based on the awareness that we cannot always have what we want, true, but also that there is enduring, sometimes hidden, always surprising spiritual value in what we do have. Discernment asks us to love many things for many different reasons and to choose what is the best of them for this instance.
The important mark of discernment is that it involves choice. It involves independence of judgment, the ability to maintain breadth of vision even in the midst of crisis, the awareness that we are not enslaved to our past. We can dream again. We can go on without leaning, without withering. We can summon up from within ourselves parts of ourselves that have yet to see the light of life. It means that despite the depth of our struggles, we must come out of our insulating isolation and live again or we shall have died, no matter how long we live.
Isolation erodes spiritual independence. In fact, it is dependence of the highest, most destructive order. Isolation blocks us from moving in the present because we are dependent on the past, trapped in the past. Or, it means that having fallen into isolation, we do not move newly into the present because we have chosen instead to be dependent on the world around us. We have chosen to be carried rather than to stand. We have chosen to give up on ourselves, to let other people carry us rather than to take care of’ ourselves. We deny or overlook or ignore the gift of independence, the place of detachment, in human development.
Isolation leaves us feeling cut off from the human race, aloof, withdrawn, at the mercy of the universe. Independence, on the other hand, emerges out of an awareness that there are other things to live for and we have within ourselves the ability to reach out and grasp them, if only we will.
Over the centuries, detachment lost its spiritual glow. Distorted by the excesses of extreme asceticism but at the same time, paradoxically, always regarded in its classical sense not as a way to deny the world but as the spiritual key to living in it more freely, detachment became the counterfeit coin of the happy life. It dampened feelings rather than sharpening them, its critics said -- and not without reason. Jansenism, with its emphasis on ascetic discipline, became popular among French Catholics in the 18th century. In the name of holiness, it suppressed emotions rather than listening to them. It rendered the world dour and made living an act of denial. In doing so it destroyed what is needed most in a time of struggle: the will to live because the world is bountiful. Detachment based on negation rather than an awareness of endless abundance is not a solution. At its healthiest, the human spirit is irrepressible and the human heart seeks hope, not desolation, however disguised dearth may be in the trappings of holiness.
But the truth remains: Nothing lasts. No single thing can consume our entire life’s meaning. No single thing can give us total satisfaction. Nothing is worth everything: neither past, nor present nor future. It isn’t true that the loss of any single thing will destroy us. Everything in life has some value and life is full of valuable things, things worth living for, things worth doing, things worth becoming, things worth loving again. It is only a matter of being detached enough from one thing to be open to everything else.
The essence of life is not to find the one thing that satisfies us but to realize that nothing can ever completely satisfy us.