Detachment and Delighting in God

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One

Introduction

One of the most prominent themes in the spiritual masters, Teresa of Avila and particularly St. John of the Cross, is the theme of detachment. Without detachment from created goods, and especially from ourselves, we can never reach perfection or the intimate union with God which is the beginning of Heaven.

So what exactly is detachment, and why do we need it? 

Two

Attachment

Actually, it might be easier to explain what detachment is if we first look at what’s meant by “attachment.”

St. John of the Cross defines attachment this way, “When the will is attached to an object, it esteems that object higher than any other, even though another, not as pleasing, may deserve higher admiration…Since nothing equals God, those who love and are attached to something along with God offend him exceedingly. If this is true, what would happen if they loved something more than God?” (Ascent, I,5,5).

In other words, you are “attached” to something when you prefer it over everything else, even if it’s objectively less worthy of your preference. And here’s the fundamental point: All unhappiness is caused by preferring a lesser good to a greater good.

Preferring money and power to love, preferring sexual fantasy to the beauty of married life, preferring drugs or alcohol to the pursuit of truth or to a life of significant achievement, this is what makes us unhappy.

Again, when you are unwilling to give up a lesser good for the sake of a greater good, you wreck your life. So, when we are attached to anything more than God, that is the ultimate source of all unhappiness. And that’s what we need to be saved from by the process of detachment. 

Three

Worldliness: preferring the creature to the Creator

A man can never be happy or at peace in his marriage if he is always hankering after some other woman. If he won’t let an old girlfriend go, for instance, he can’t be happy with his wife. The fact that a love for another woman is competing with his love for his wife means he’s not at peace. So too, we can never be happy with God if there is something in our hearts that’s competing with Him.

John of the Cross explains that this is why the soul needs a total purification from all attachments, because only then can we be happy with God just as a man can only delight in his wife when he’s not lusting after someone else. 

So too, John of the Cross says, “Without this purgation the soul would be wholly unable to experience the satisfaction of all this abundance of spiritual delight. Only one attachment or on particular object to which the spirit is actually or habitually bound is enough to hinder the experience or reception of the delicate and intimate delight of the spirit of love that contains eminently in itself all delights.” Dark Night, II, ch. 9:

John gives another great example: imagine you're trying to enjoy some magnificent sight, say, a great work of art or a glorious landscape, but you have something blocking the view. That’d be really frustrating. That’s like a created good we can’t stop thinking about, even when we’re trying to appreciate God.

That’s why Jesus says in the Gospel, “Whoever does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). It’s also why the Old Testament God is a “jealous God,” and will not allow His people to worship other gods. It’s not for His sake. It’s for our sake! Because all unhappiness comes from having something in our lives that competes with God. From preferring something else to God. All our unhappiness comes from our disordered priorities, which prevent us from enjoying the Supreme Good.

And God wants us to be free of those attachments, so we can be happy.

Four

Detachment and Mortification

God is the one and only thing we absolutely need. Our disordered attachments make us think or feel we need other things more, things that we can’t do without. 

So how do we get to the point where we can do without these things? How do we get to the point where we can say to God, “I don’t need anything but you.” and mean it? 

St. John says, “To Journey to God, the will must walk in detachment from every pleasant thing, rather than in attachment to it.” (Living Flame, stanza 3)

Now we can at least start this process on our own, by the practice of mortification, denying our obsessions in little ways. Work, kids, and grandkids can be a disordered attachment. Yes, be responsible, but don’t obsess. We give 150% at work or to our kids and grandkids and this hypervigilance is counterproductive. Kill this obsession, mortify it a little, back off, and do 100% rather than 150%. You will be more productive at work and you’ll give your kids and grandkids room to grow in responsibility. 

Maybe you're obsessed about your health. Eat real food, not that processed stuff; exercise, drink less alcohol. But in all the ways you are hypervigilant or obsessed about your health or preventing sickness and disease you need to back off, mortify that. You cause more harm to your nervous system by hypervigilance that actually compromises your immune system because the two are connected.

If you feel like you can’t live without checking your phone then go an hour or two each day or two without checking your phone. You probably spend too much time on the news or shows or YouTube – cut it back – kill it a little – mortify it. 

Because you actually don’t need these things to be happy. All you need is God to be happy. Which is why little acts of mortification actually help you remember how to be happy.

Five

God’s Purification

Ultimately, though, we will need God’s help letting go of our attachments. As we begin to draw closer to Him, He will eventually topple our idols.

That’s just what purification means. It means God will take away the things we think we need, so that enjoy the Supreme, Eternal Good and not have that enjoyment compromised by fretful impulses towards lesser things.

This is why John of the Cross says, “God allows nothing else to dwell together with him” (Ascent, I, ch. 5) – just as a pure man, married to a beautiful woman, allows no desire for another woman to enter into his soul. So God will give us the opportunity to actively, actually prefer Him to anything else, just as He gave Abraham the opportunity to choose God even over the created goods dearest to his heart – his son, his lineage, his future. 

This is purification at God’s hands. But when it’s over, not only will we enjoy God to the fullest but we will, like Abraham, receive back even those created goods we were willing to sacrifice for God’s sake.