“Your life will be in flow, if you let go. Everything that is meant to follow you will do so,” reads the small, fading post-it note taped to my computer. I first heard the quote from a friend about two years ago. At the time, she was going through a rather major life transition – finishing up her PhD dissertation, accepting a teaching job in a new city, and breaking up with her partner of five years. She shared the quote with me while we sat on a bench in a beautiful urban sanctuary in downtown Denver, Colorado – the Denver Botanic Gardens. As we sat together, under the warm Colorado sun, stealing glimpses of the still snow-capped Front Range, I began to study her. Amidst all of the external change going on in her life, I saw (and actually felt!) in her a deep feeling of inner-calm, an admirable congruity between her values and her actions. She had a grace to the way she moved e
ffortlessly through her days, and a strong sense of “warrior presence”, something I explored in Twelve by Twelve as one’s ability to maintain beauty and control in their interior space, through being fully present in the moment.
In his book, Seven Laws for Spiritual Success, Deepak Chopra discusses the Law of Detachment. The Law of Detachment is the ability to let go of one’s need to control outcomes in situations, attachment to one’s desires, and the need to control other people. In the Vedic tradition, among many other spiritual traditions, the path to ultimate freedom and happiness lies in letting go of attachment – to things, to people, to situations, to outcomes, to ideas, to certainty…Deepak Chopra writes, “the real nature of detachment is a loving, wise participation in life while maintaining the awareness of an inner core of peace and presence that is our true identity.”
“Your life will be in flow, if you let go. Everything that is meant to follow you will do so.”