Detachment ≠ Stoicism: The Holy Art of Not Losing Your Cool
How real detachment opens the heart instead of shutting it down
This reflection continues our exploration of Cynthia Bourgeault’s Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, which draws from Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self. In this chapter, Bourgeault unpacks what Helminski calls “detachment,” a word that has suffered from centuries of misunderstanding. Rather than emotional withdrawal or icy composure, she reveals it as a living practice of freedom—a loosening of our grip on outcomes so that love can move through us without distortion.
Helminski defines detachment as “an inner loosening of addictive dependence upon those tendencies which dominate the ego.” That phrase captures it. He is not talking about giving up coffee or sugar. He is pointing to the subtle addictions of identity itself: being right, being liked, being seen as good or wise or strong.
Detachment begins the moment you can feel those reflexes start to tighten and still choose not to obey them.
When Calm is Just Control in Disguise
Modern stoicism looks peaceful, but it often hides fear. We call it boundaries, composure, or self-mastery, but beneath the surface it is usually control. We measure enlightenment by how little anyone can bother us. That is not serenity. That is tension pretending to be virtue.
True detachment does not make you unfeeling. It restores proportion. You still love, but without ownership. You still feel anger, but without the need to destroy. You still care, but not in a way that costs your center.
Presence feels everything but no longer mistakes the passing weather for the sky.
The Ego’s Favorite Costume
The ego’s favorite costume is calm. It loves pretending to be spiritual, rational, and above the chaos while secretly managing every outcome. “I’m not attached,” it says, while gripping its image with white knuckles.
Cynthia Bourgeault calls this a “more sophisticated personality.” The ego simply trades drama for decorum. Real detachment is not a performance. It is a shift in center. We stop orbiting our emotions and rest in the awareness that holds them.
When detachment is genuine, love grows warmer and compassion deepens. When it is false, it turns into cold self-importance.
Feeling Everything, Owning Nothing
The Sufis say, “The mature heart weeps with the grieving and laughs with the joyful, but none of it sticks.” That is the essence of presence. Detachment does not resist life’s movement. It simply refuses to turn any moment into a personal possession.
Grief moves through. Joy moves through. Awareness remains steady. This is not indifference. It is intimacy without possession. The personality grabs each emotion and builds a story around it. The soul simply sees.
Why Detachment is not Distance
Western religion often confuses holiness with restraint. But the mystics were not restrained. Teresa of Avila laughed and argued with God. Rumi sang and danced through his longing. Jesus wept and shouted and overturned tables. None of them practiced emotional minimalism.
Detachment does not shrink the range of feeling. It purifies it. Think of it as emotional clarity. You feel everything fully but without residue.
Presence does not reject emotion. It digests it until only wisdom remains.
How to Catch the Hook
In the Gurdjieff lineage that shaped both Helminski and Bourgeault, the “outer self” is ruled by the pain-pleasure principle. It seeks approval, avoids blame, and reacts to every gust of praise or rejection.
That is where the practice begins. Notice the hook. The moment when a word or silence grabs you. When you feel the heat rise, stop. Do not fight it and do not feed it. Take one breath and settle back behind your eyes into the body’s quiet gravity.
You will feel the difference. The identification loosens. Attention becomes available again. That simple movement is detachment in action. You have not suppressed anything. You have stepped out of orbit.
Compassion With a Spine
A detached heart still feels pain. It simply does not collapse under it. You can sit beside someone who suffers without drowning in their sorrow. You can listen to anger without matching its pitch. You can work for justice without burning out in rage.
That is compassion with a spine. Pity sinks with the drowning. Compassion throws a rope. Detachment keeps the rope strong enough to hold.
The Practice in a World on Fire
In a culture addicted to outrage, detachment feels like betrayal. Everyone is supposed to have a hot take, a side, and a reaction. But running on outrage is spiritual junk food.
Detachment does not mean apathy toward injustice. It means clarity before action. You still protest, vote, and speak out, but from coherence rather than chaos. Jesus did not clear the temple because he lost control. He did it from perfect clarity. His anger was not reaction. It was love acting cleanly.
Presence is not passive. It is the power to act without residue.
The Inner Loosening
Helminski and Bourgeault both describe detachment as a loosening. That word matters. It is not demolition. You do not crush the ego. You relax it. The more it relaxes, the more light can move through it.
Each time you release attachment to control or certainty, you recover energy that was trapped in anxiety. That energy becomes awareness. And the more you let go, the more alive you feel. You stop gripping life and start participating in it.
The Holy Art of Letting Go
When the heat rises and you feel the need to prove, defend, or fix, try this. Notice the hook. Breathe once. Let the energy pass through before you respond. That pause is not avoidance. It is freedom.
Bourgeault quotes Helminski’s line, “Whoever makes all cares into a single care, the care for simply being present, will be relieved of all care by that presence.” That is the secret. The moment you let presence take priority over control, everything else begins to fall back into order.
Virgin Monk Boy’s Take
Most people think detachment means checking out. It actually means checking in to the deeper self that does not flinch when the story changes. The trick is not to stop feeling but to stop confusing feeling with identity.
The saints were not numb. They simply stopped giving every emotion a vote. When you loosen your grip on how things should be, you discover how alive things already are.
Detachment is not cold. It is clarity with warmth still in it. Blessed are the ones who stay warm in the fire and cool in the storm.
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🍂Many thanks for your useful guidance, just in time for those holiday family get-togethers — when lots of us tend to lose our cool. ☮️ The last line of your essay is my new slogan, all through the party season: “Stay warm in the fire & cool in the storm.” Love it!🎄
This is a very helpful definition of detachment. I think in many Christian faith traditions, detachment gets mixed up with the whole :feeling is bad" approach. You can't feel because it takes you off the track to perfection (spoiler- there is no such track).
Detachment was taught as the "other shoe dropping" so don't get invested in the present emotion.
It was about experiencing or not experiencing but not tied to a choice of reaction.