Disclaimer: This is a reflection on spiritual detachment and the need for emotional integration. It includes personal insights and a gentle critique of certain belief systems.
There’s a version of spirituality that proclaims inner peace is achieved through detachment, and enlightenment is reached through the rejection of all human needs, desires, and comforts.
In this belief system, deeply embracing and accepting suffering is the hero’s journey.
Emotional needs are seen as unnecessary at best—a clever trap at worst.
The pinnacle of enlightenment, it seems, is needing nothing and no one.
There are certainly measures of merit and wisdom within this perspective, but personal experience has taught me there’s also an unbalanced—dare I say toxic—side to it.
I’m not interested in throwing this entire philosophy over my shoulder, nor am I suggesting you should, dear reader. I’m here to name what happens when it’s taken too far.
When spiritual rhetoric becomes a weapon instead of a balm—what we’re left with is:
A distortion.
A half-truth.
A cage disguised as freedom and clarity.
Lately, while in conversation with someone I love, I found myself wrestling with this perspective. No joy, no praise, no creature comforts, and certainly no pain—not from others, not from within. Just pure, silent endurance wrapped in inner peace.
To feel anything? Weakness.
To need anything? Attachment.
To be hurt by anything? Proof your ego is still running the show, and you likely aren’t taking responsibility for your own feelings.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but that sounds like hell in a linen robe.
💀 The Doctrine of Detachment (and Why It Hurts)
When detachment becomes toxic it sounds like this:
- Ego must be eliminated.
- The desire for validation is an unhealthy attachment.
- You shouldn’t need comfort.
- Suffering is just resistance to what is.
- If you feel hurt, it’s because you’re not “doing the work.”
- I bare no responsibility for the impact of my words or actions because you chose how you feel.
In my opinion, this is not enlightenment.
This is weaponized detachment—and I’m not sipping that brew anymore.
I believe in ego—not the kind that is endlessly needy and exalts itself above all others, but the kind that expresses healthy self-esteem and self-awareness.
The kind that says, “I matter. I deserve to take up space. My gifts are worth celebrating.”
I believe compliments and validation are sacred.
They’re not ego-stroking—they’re emotional nutrition.
They say: “I see you. What you created touched me. Thank you for sharing your gifts with me.”
I believe it is okay—holy, even—to want warmth, connection, to be understood, to be cherished.
It’s not weakness to be affected by someone’s cruelty.
It’s not spiritual failure to cry when you’re hurt.
I believe suffering is a natural response to trauma. Suggesting that suffering is your own damn fault may be true to an extent, but it also completely invalidates any measure of healthy emotional processing of grief, fear, or anger. This only leads to suppression and guilt for having an emotional response in the first place. Suffering is a call for care, not dismissal.
We are interconnected beings who affect each other emotionally—and that matters. We meet the Devine in one another through our emotions, not despite them. True love listens, offers empathy, and takes responsibility for how words and actions impact someone else. Spiritual love that makes no room for felt experience isn’t love— it’s philosophy.
🧠 When “Wisdom” Is Just a Wall
What I’ve learned recently (through clenched teeth and a wounded heart) is this:
- Not all spiritual language is born from love.
- Some “truths” are really just spiritual ego and walls disguised as wisdom.
- And my softness—my need for tenderness, my openness to receive—will be seen as a threat in systems that only values self-erasure.
I’ve sat across from someone who told me that compliments are suspect. That maybe my friends only praise my writing because they know I need it.
As if needing encouragement is a shameful flaw.
Perhaps it wasn’t meant in the manner in which I took it, but what I heard was:
“The compliments you receive aren’t real—they are performance. Your connections aren’t honest. Allow me to check your ego and sever your attachment to praise. You’re more enlightened now. You’re welcome. ”
But here’s the thing: I do need encouragement.
Not because I’m weak—
But because I’m a human being who creates from the depths of my soul. I dare to be seen. The encouragement of others feeds my soul on my journey.
It’s certainly possible that all that was intended from this seemingly disempowering comment is that I have good friends’ who understand what I need and respond accordingly.
For the sake of my soul, I choose to believe the positive narrative was the intended one.
🥀 Crushing the Ego Isn’t Growth. It’s Grief.
This version of spirituality that shames emotion and glorifies emotional detachment doesn’t just miss the point—it wounds the soul.
It teaches people to see hurt as failure.
To fear love unless it’s perfectly detached.
To reject praise unless it’s dished out in microscopic doses, and wrapped in self-deprecation.
No wonder intimacy suffers. No wonder connection feels threatening.
No wonder joy is treated like a dangerous indulgence instead of a sacred inheritance.
I don’t desire detachment as a path to escape suffering. I want to weep bittersweet tears when a song touches a still healing part of my soul. I want to feel deeply proud of myself when someone tells me my work means something to them, knowing I have used the gifts I was given. I want to express my grief when I’ve been unfairly blamed by someone I love.
I don’t want to transcend my humanity.
I want to inhabit it fully.
🔮 So What Am I Learning?
This experience has taught my soul some things I didn’t expect:
- Some people are repelled by my vulnerability because they do not have the capacity to hold it, and they cannot understand it or control it.
- Contrast is a teacher: I live in my softness and crave depth. But I inhabit a world that treats sensitivity as inadequacy and liability. There is extreme bravery and resilience in my desire to remain soft in a world that praises external power as strength.
- Love without emotional safety is not love—it’s a performance of peace, and I’m done auditioning.
- My need for tenderness doesn’t make me broken—it makes me whole.
- Joy, validation, comfort, art, and softness are not crutches—they’re the ceremony of aliveness.
🚫Disappearing Is Not Divine
I will not crush my ego to prove I’m enlightened.
I will not harden my heart just to survive someone else’s discomfort with vulnerability.
I will not erase my desire for compassion and tenderness.
I will not self-abandon or practice self-erasure in an effort to eliminate my humanity and elevate my spirituality.
My ego is not always the enemy. My desires and attachments are not always the problem.
A balanced ego propels self-discovery, self-awareness, self-esteem, humility, compassion, and resilience.
Balanced desires and attachments allow us to co-create with joy, form deep, meaningful connections, and facilitate the motivation needed to pursue our higher calling.
I am spiritual.
I am sensitive.
I am a human with emotional needs and desires.
I cry when I am hurting. I rejoice and give deep thanks when I am praised, acknowledged, and truly seen.
I am integrating my humanity with my spiritual identity, and it’s the most important work I have ever done.
I believe—deep in my matcha-sipping, art-making, soul-loving bones—
True love doesn’t punish softness. It protects it.
True spirituality doesn’t erase the self. It reveres it.
Cosmic Tea 