When adversity arises, of course detachment is the answer. But detachment is not a switch to be flicked. Even if a switch could be flicked, that would deny the adversity its purpose, and really render futile the associated suffering. Detachment is not dissociation, denial, or rose-tinting.
The path to detachment lies in recognising the fact of the adversity (whether stemming from circumstance or a lesson proposed by the soul), recognising that must be a point to it, and then surrendering to it. Not bypassing it: surrendering to it. There is nothing cosy about this, and this does not entail the end of the adversity or in fact the feelings associated with the adversity. The human experience continues unabated. Peace is ultimately achieved, and joy is regained, but, from within the storm, I do not believe I am ever transported directly to shore. I have to swim, and the water, and its lessons, can be very cold indeed. Peace and joy lie on the other side of the experience. They are not the second door to choose. There is only one door. The cup must be drunk (cf. both the Garden of Gethsemane and Dumbledore’s poisoned draught).
Pain, suffering, disillusionment, discouragement, the appearance of futility, and, in fact, the reality of the futility of a material world without the awareness of the spiritual dimension that provides the material world with its context must be looked at head-on and experienced, cell by cell by cell. The only way out is through to the other side. To accept it fully and to feel it fully, not to bypass, overlook, override, or slap a bumper sticker on.
A distinction must be also made between the turmoil of emotional entanglement, resistance, and unnatural anxieties, on one hand, to which the answer is detachment, and a fully lived life, on the other, which will naturally include periods of both abundance and sterility, excitement and apathy, joy and despair, and all of the other pairs of opposites. One can feel despair and be at peace. One can be happy yet agitated. Peace and emotion are on different scales. There is nothing regrettable about the full range of human emotions. The regrettable thing would be the complete avoidance of one half of life, the desperate clinging to pink, fluffy, anodyne notions of God without any of the associated duties attached to authentic surrender to God, without any of the challenges that flow from the renunciation of individualism and materialism as guiding philosophies, without any of the pain of loss that is the inevitable concomitant of genuine love. Aslan is good but not tame and certainly not safe.
Of course, as one goes through the day, one has to dismiss the intrusive fear thoughts, turn to God, look for strength and direction, etc., because one is on duty, and it is those one is serving in order to serve God who demand one’s immediate attention, care, love, and charity. When one has a job to do, the job must be done, and, to do the job, the mental distractions of self-indulgent thinking are the enemy. Considerable persistence and training (plus cycling through various remedies to find the right one for the moment) is required to dedicate the mind and the body to the task at hand, for God’s sake, which is ultimately for one’s own.
But the feelings, to be dismissed in times of calm activity, must be reviewed at some point in the daily cycle. They are not coming from nowhere, and the where that they are coming from must be uncovered. The smoke is coming from a fire, and the fire must be approached to be put out.
One cannot Pollyanna the feelings out of existence, pretend they are not there, dismiss them as the emanations of an unreal world: the feelings are the breadcrumb trail to the literally dreadful fallacies of individualism, materialism, hedonism, sensualism, and the many other isms on offer to the progressive, modern human being with its book-learning and sophisticated, knowing outlook on life.
That unreal world, even if it is unreal in the context of a higher reality, the ‘insubstantial pageant’ (in Prospero’s words) is nonetheless the world we are 99% embedded in, and the way out is to stride right into it and see one’s reactions to it for what they are. It is beyond that that freedom lies.
Yes, the construct of the world in my mind has been concocted, but no one else concocted it on my behalf: I concocted it for myself, and it is only within me it can be unmade, the first step in which is the unflinching survey of its causal mechanisms.
The way out is not sought academically or by plain renunciation of the material world. As Oswald Chambers says somewhere in My Utmost For His Highest, those who detach too fervently from the material world are doing so to conceal their actual psychological attachment to it. So beware the ascetics, as well.
I believe the way out is sought by the unsparing but dispassionate and ultimately neutral self-honesty that the programme enjoins me to engage in on a daily basis.
Unless I learn from my days, I am doomed to repeat them. But if I learn from them, I discover both the richness of being fully alive in this realm and snatch glimpses of the other realm that overlies it.