As I reviewed my life with soft eyes, meeting moment after moment of the flickering past with a nonjudgmental awareness, I experienced healings in quite unexpected ways. I met myself with more kindness and a willingness not to suffer for the times I had "fallen."
This growth of compassion taught me a considerably more merciful level of what "detachment" really means. This is a much misunderstood term that careens through spiritual practice throughout the world. It is a word that sends the unintentionally suffering mind shuffling off to the madhouse. At least that is what it felt like to me when, at nineteen, I could not comprehend how to become "detached" from such deep feelings and still be alive, much less write a poem.
Our misinterpretation of that honorable teaching can stop us in our tracks. Until we discover that detachment does not mean an indifference to the pain in ourselves and the people around us, but rather a settling back to observe with clarity and perspective that which calls out for healing. Gradually it becomes clear that detachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be.
— Stephen Levine, A Year to Live