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Detachment

You enter the brain through the eye, march up the optic nerve, round and round the cortex looking behind every neuron, and then, before you know it, you emerge into daylight on the spike of a motor nerve impulse, scratching your head and wondering where the self is. - “Consciousness” by Rita Carter

Experiencing those rare moments of Consciousness as in being detached from our own thoughts is a function of the "higher brain.”

The definition of detachment could be confusing to an ordinary person. He/She may understand a detachment as a careless state. Kind of like replacing the thought "I am angry" with the thought "I don't care,” which is basically creating the belief "I shouldn't care about anything.”

Let's assume that our ordinary, automatic thoughts (beliefs) are a lower basic layer of the thinking process in our brain. Then having the second layer of thoughts on the top of the first layer would create a state of detachment.

Those thoughts are processed by the brain at the same time, simultaneously. The second layer of thoughts is not prominent at first, but rather, very subtle and short lived: "I am thinking that I am angry.”

Don't confuse it with the thought "I am angry,” the lower layer of thinking. The basic thought happens automatically, we are not conscious of it, we are totally associated with it. Being angry is all that we are doing at that moment. Sometimes, in addition to the thought "I am angry," we might think "but I can't show it, I need to control (suppress) my angry thoughts.” This is still the basic lower layer of thinking; it is the liner.

It is the second simultaneous layer of thought "I could see my thinking that ‘I am angry’," without any judgments, allowing the anger to be as it is, that creates an experience of witnessing your thoughts. This is expanding your Consciousness and knowing yourself!

How are those layers of thoughts activated ?

It is almost like brain creates an extra function, a stalker, a witness, to be able to see its own thinking

Meditation is the key to the "higher brain functions.”

Meditation, and Vipassana (mental training) is a process of familiarization with one's own mental life, leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion.

Understanding and accepting that you are not your thoughts is the first step to practicing a detachment!

You have heard many times, know yourself, and you will know others. To be able to start this process of knowing, you will have to be detached.

In the second part of this article, I'll share my own practice of detachment, and also will outline the best sources that are available out there, specifically for beginning and intermediate students of this subject.