The advantage of “non-involvement”
When I purpose to my
interlocutors to exercise the detachment, that is to maintain a
detached relation with the daily reality, they generally show
perplexities. Then, when we reach an explanation about their
behaviour, I discover a certain concern, founded on the fear to
loose the flavour of life or on the fear to become egoist more
than how they already are.
The modern man, constantly in search of satisfaction, usually
practices the emotion, even as a form of nourishment, and the
continue research in the diversity, without realizing that this
way has no end. The way of emotion, if badly managed, doesn’t
bring to the quiet that is necessary to the free use of
experiences joint to the inner life.
The success of some modern instrument is due to man’s brainless
attachment to the emotion: think, for example, about the use
that normally we do of television. It would be a remarkable
communication medium and invention if it would be used more
carefully, but anyway, in general, it results damaging. I hope
that you noticed that the advertising images’ are presented so
rapidly, changing every 4 or 5 seconds, and that you asked
yourself: why?
By examining two parameters we can have an answer: first let’s
think about the relation cost/time and then about the time
necessary to the brain for a just enough reading. About this
second parameter, I collected information from the technicians
of this sector and I understand that in the modern way of doing
television, an image that lasts longer than 5 seconds is
considered too long and boring.
Can you see where we are going to and at what speed we have to
continuously feed our mind? I personally think that this is,
together with the sense of insecurity for our survival, one of
the bigger cause of the anxiety’s distress that man today
suffers and I can state that, very soon, we’ll see a spread of
problems due to hallucinations.
The attachment to emotion and to the mental underlines how much
man lives in the senses and in the appearance and how rarely he
dedicates himself to the self-knowledge and to his inner life.
This could not be a problem if there were not evident signs of a
general unease. This work of mine wants to offer an idea for
recovering a healthier attitude for the events of life through
an appropriate development of the quality of detachment.
In other words, my suggestion is to exhort you to go along a way
on which you can enrich yourself with skills and behaviour’s
qualities that are more useful and objective, and on this way
you can learn to get through experiences with all your qualities
but without involvement.
To let you better understand the advantages of this way, I
usually tell my pupils an unpleasant story that I’m now going to
tell you, hoping that it will bring you to a reflective moment.
Years ago, in Milan’s periphery, a just completed street
resulted to be very fast and dangerous because of the lack of
traffic lights.
There was some pedestrian crossing but still for the pedestrians
it was very difficult to cross it. One day, a car run down a
child, sweeping him away and crushing him under the wheels.
Three men saw the crash and they had different reactions: the
first man run away terrified… the second one fainted… and the
third one tried to intervene to help the child and the driver
who was shocked.
Life, in that occasion, gave to a therapist a big experience: he
brought the three subjects, in different moments, to the centre
where he practiced and taught yoga. They went to him to get some
help, trying to go through the trauma that the crash inferred
them.
With the first subject, the one who run away, the therapists had
to hard work for three years because, together with the trauma
itself, he had a terrible sense of guilty, very hard to loose.
The second man gave him two years of care: his instinctive
identification in the crash (he also had a son of that age)
deeply scared him. That fainting, executed by nature to
safeguard him, protected him perhaps from an irreversible
trauma, but, at the same time, the impression in his
subconscious had the characteristics of an unsolved problem.
The man who kept him less busy was the third one: only few
months to free him of the residual impressions that sometimes
troubled him. He had a great instinctive ability of
non-involvement. This ability allowed him to stay in the
objective reality: even if he had children as well, he did not
identify himself in the event.
I usually end the story noticing that this episode shows that
when you are detached you are more useful to yourself and to the
others: the trauma of this man was lighter and he was the only
one who helped that people and went to the rescue. So, this is
the way to follow. Besides, can you imagine if a dentist
identifies himself with his patient’s pain? Surely he couldn’t
work correctly by choosing the right.
In conclusion, I state that non-involvement doesn’t mean to
loose sensitiveness, but if ever to refine it and to use it for
a more objective, and consequently real, view.
by Amadio Bianchi