'Let Go Now' Detachment is Freedom from Chaos

Just six years ago, I was lost in the turmoil of addiction and control. However, through a profound inner journey of Soul Recovery, I discovered the serenity of detachment. Join me as we navigate the transformative path from chaos to peace, guided by Karen Casey's insights from her book "Let Go Now: Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom." In today's episode, Rev. Rachel reads and reflects on the meditation titled "Detachment is Freedom from Chaos." She shares how a shift in perception can help us stay connected to the people in our lives while letting go of the chaos of their choices.

For more information about Rev. Rachel Harrison and Recover Your Soul- visit the website www.recoveryoursoul.net  use the code TRYASESSION for 40% off your first Spiritual Coaching session when you book on the website.  Visit the website for all events and groups to get involved in Soul Recovery and the community.

Soul Recovery Support Group on Zoom -The 1st Monday of the Month, 6PM Mountain Time. This is a drop in support group where we can come together to explore, connect and support each other on our Soul Recovery journey.  Visit the website to register and receive the meeting invite.  Free to attend and donations appreciated.

Join others on the Soul Recovery journey on Monday July 1st from 6-7PM on Zoom for the FREE Soul Recovery Support Group. This month we will be talking about 'Criticism and Judgement.' I will give a brief talk, open for questions and then we will break into small groups.  Register on the website, or if you have already registered- be on the look out the day of the meeting in your inbox for a reminder email.  

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:59

Maybe you're overwhelmed in a chaotic life. Maybe you're ready to step out of chaos and move into a more peaceful way of being. This has been my experience too. I was tired of so much chaos and just so much overwhelm all the time that I couldn't even keep my head above water. But it's through the soul recovery process inspired by so many wonderful teachings, including Let Go Now Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom, be habit forming that we sometimes can mistake excitement and chaos back and forth. In this episode, I talk about how we can utilize the tools of spirituality and this level of detachment to be more in line with our true nature and be connected to the people in our life in a healthier way. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:10

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:51

Hello and welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I just like to invite anybody who's new, because this might be your first time with us, or maybe you've been here a couple of times and you're just wondering what's going on in this Recover your Soul thing. And we're here as a community. I want you to really feel this community and those of you who are coming back week after week. I'm watching the numbers grow. I'm watching you share with each other. I can see the new towns and the new cities that are part of this community, as people listen from different places all over the world, and I'm just honored to be in your ear right now. I feel incredibly lucky that I've had this profound change in my life and, through that, that I can share the stories with you and that they might inspire your change in your life. We can, together, recover our souls, and it's around learning how to be okay even when the world around us isn't okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:54

I want to also just ask a favor. I don't do this very often and I keep forgetting to say it at the end, so I'm just going to say at the beginning if you love this podcast, if you're on a platform that allows you to do a review or five stars I don't ask for it very often, but if you could write a review, if you could give it the stars, it really does help move it up in the algorithms. And not only that, it tells people that it is working. What is your story of soul recovery? Share it in a review and let people know how this has transformed and changed your life. It gives people hope that they too can be in a dark place and know that there is hope on the other side. When we can see that, when we have a oh my gosh, like a life vest to hold on to, when it just feels like it's too overwhelming, there's amazing shifts that can happen, that we know that we too can get to the other side. So if you've had transformation, please share it. If you're ready for transformation, go read those reviews and hear and see that soul recovery is indeed working in people's lives. I am stunned at the movement that happens in people who come to me for coaching. It is unbelievable when you are ready for change in just a few sessions really those of you who have done all nine steps with me. I'm dumbfounded at the amount of transformation that happens in your life. It's incredible. But even people that just come once or a couple times, I see shifts and they report back to me major transformations and how they are showing up in the world. And it is not me, it is really spirit that does the work. This is you connecting to your higher self with the reflection of a guide, and I offer that guidance.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:55

And for today's episode I want to come back to Let Go Now Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom by Karen Casey, because these detachment meditations are so powerful and they go along with everything that we've been learning in our soul recovery journey. And detachment is this ability to separate just enough from the situations, the people, the circumstances that are in our lives that we aren't living those experiences. We are choosing how we think and feel. We are choosing how we're going to interact. And detachment doesn't mean that we're not invested, that we don't care, that we don't want to be part of these people's lives. What it means is we stop having it be our experience, because it's really their experience. It helps us understand step one in soul recovery that we admit that we're powerless over every single thing outside of ourself and that our pain and suffering comes from our desire to control the people, places and circumstances in our lives. And this doesn't mean that there's no power in your life. It means you put the power back where it belongs in your own self, choosing for yourself how you're going to feel, how you're going to interact. So I wanted to come back to this book because I'm just so loving it. I'm not reading a meditation every day. I've been reading one every couple days, maybe once a week. One every couple days, maybe once a week. And I landed on number 27 today.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:29

Detachment is freedom from chaos, and I thought yep got to bring this to the community Because I lived in so much chaos for so long and I don't have as much chaos. I have almost no chaos in my life anymore, and there's something to that. It didn't just happen overnight, it didn't happen without work, it didn't happen without doing these principles, the soul recovery steps, without really attending to myself and being aware of how I choose to interact with every single thing that's in my life. So I thought this would be a great one to read. As usual, I will read from it and then I will respond to it from the soul recovery perspective and my own life situation and journey and experience. Okay, detachment is freedom from chaos. The page reads.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:18

Living chaotic lives can become habit forming, so much so that a person doesn't even realize that there's another way to exist. Some people equate chaos with excitement. In fact, and who doesn't enjoy excitement, at least occasionally? But not knowing the difference between chaos and excitement means one will likely miss the myriad of opportunities to be present in the right way to the moment. That has been called Chaos is seductive, to be sure, but so is the experience of peaceful presence once it's been cultivated.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:54

What I love about this first paragraph is this idea that we don't even know sometimes that we're in chaos. We don't even know that there's another way to live. And what I hope in soul recovery that you continue to get from me is there's no judgment, there is no right or wrong. This isn't about oh, I should have been doing it this way so much more. Before I'm doing it wrong, I need to be in this other place. No, it is that you are exactly where your soul is supposed to be at this moment, and this awakening that you're having, this moment where you're actually looking at.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:30

How can I detach from the chaos. Oh, that is chaos. Oh, I am mixing that up with excitement. I'm getting confused, and of course I am. It's likely that that's how your childhood was. It's likely that there's something in your system that has set up this behavior or this way of feeling. And so the more that you can be kind to yourself, the more that you can just have this gentle awareness and open up, just enough to say, yeah, I want excitement occasionally, but I don't want to miss the opportunities to be my healthiest self. I don't want the chaos. That is the part that's unhappy or unhealthy or heavy. I want to be able to have peace in my heart and then notice when there's fun, notice when there's some higher energy, notice when there's something to be enjoyed, something that's exciting, instead of the heaviness and the fear really that can come from chaos. So what I love is that we are being gentle with ourselves, that we're just noticing. We're having this place of slowly allowing the memories, slowly allowing the parts of ourselves that have set up ways to survive to be able to calm down the protectors, as you've heard me talk about in other episodes and I have a full episode around protectors and parts.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:13

A lot of what happens with us is we set up protections to cover our pain and to cover the patterns, then beliefs that we created as the stories from our childhood, and of course we did so. We're looking at them in new ways, in soul recovery. We're opening up to a new way of being. We're changing our perception, just enough to be able to see it more clearly. She goes on to say becoming willing to live one's experience differently is the first necessary step to discovering the freedom promised by detaching from upheavals in the lives of others. So that's what I just said, right, that just by being willing to experience your life differently, just a little bit, is the first step to discovering the freedom promised. She uses the word promised, I use the word promised. I promise that if you actually do these steps, if you actually work the program of spirituality, of moving how you choose to see it, you will have freedom from the pain. It will change how you interact with yourself and others.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:33

And what she says in the last sentence is detaching from the upheavals in the lives of others. It's chaotic out there, it's crazy out there, it's complicated out there. No one is saying it isn't. What we're saying is you don't have to be involved in every single aspect of everybody's life that's going on and think that you need to do something about it or even to hurt from it or worry about it. She says just because we're on the journey with someone else doesn't mean we have to respond to their experiences on their path. Just because you're walking life with somebody doesn't mean you have to experience their stuff.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:20

And many of you who are listening, you're empaths. You feel the feelings of others. That's a beautiful trait to have. It's a truly wonderful aspect of who you are. And so I said before that that means that we often show up with empathy for others, meaning we feel their feelings and we say I feel that Let me carry that burden with you, let me carry that burden for you. And in soul recovery we're learning to move to compassion, which means that you see their experience, you see their path and you recognize it and you can have those tender heart feelings around it. But you aren't feeling their feelings with them, for them, doing for them. You are, you're observing it from a loving, detached way. She says, on the contrary, we may be traveling with them so that we can show them that there is another way to see and live through a particular experience. We can never know for sure what we've been called to do, but we can know for certain that if we show up lovingly we will be on the right track.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:29

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Deep dive in a zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the soul recovery path, once a month for the free zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recover your soulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the soul recovery mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:27

I love this because it's also sharing what I talk about in soul recovery, which is your healing, is the most important thing that you can do in the lives of others. It may not feel like it at the moment. It may feel like I really need to save my child from this difficult experience. I may need to be there for somebody in their times of trial and tribulation and lose myself through it. But what we're showing in Soul Recovery, and she's also showing in this detachment book, is if we can be our best selves. If we can be our best selves, we can model for others a different way of being. People learn from actions. People learn from seeing it. You can use all the words in the world, but if they don't watch, you walk the path, and then, if you're walking the path, they have to choose whether they want to walk it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:27

Sometimes it can be hard to understand why people have to go through such difficulty, and I think of that for myself. Why did I have to go through such difficulty? And I think about this chaos. So let's look at difficulty and chaos.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:42

One of the things that I recognize in myself is that there's still a part of me that wants to know what's happening with a lot of the people in my life and what's fascinating. And I think about this for myself quite a bit. Maybe in the morning I'll be thinking about Rich going off to today. He said he had five jobs right. So part of me wants to ask him what jobs he's doing and what is he doing on those jobs. And I'm curious. And there is an element of curiosity from care that we have in people's lives that's really loving and beneficial and heartfelt and connecting. And then there's another piece where we're actually taking on their stuff and taking on their worry. So what I realized with myself, whether it's with my husband or whether it's with my grown boys, I want to know about their lives, I absolutely want to know about their lives.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:45

But I'm not interested in the chaos, because the chaos is the confusion. The chaos is the upset. The chaos is the dysfunctional part that is trying to control the world or is disappointed or feels disenfranchised or feels like the world is beating them up in some way. And the more that I've backed off of participating with those kinds of conversations, interestingly enough, the more that their perceptions have changed in their own life, because I'm not fueling those beliefs, those storylines, those scripts in their lives. I'm not fueling the part that says that they're overwhelmed. I'm not fueling the part that says there's not enough. I'm not fueling the part that says that they can't make it or they can't handle it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:43

And that part for me is the letting go of the chaos. And I'm interested in the excitement. This weekend, bodhi and his girlfriend are going to go off to a music festival. I want to know the exciting part of that. What are they doing? What is it going to look like? What kind of fun are they going to have? I'm going to leave the chaos out of it. I'm not going to ask them questions about what their usage is going to be, what they're staying in, how much money they're going to spend. All the logistics, all the ins and outs that's really none of my business. That's me starting to get into control and chaos right, because I'm completely unable to have any control over any of those things. And then that's what my mind would be caught up in thinking about, and having that part of me that's being taken up with somebody else's stuff.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:39

And if Rich says, yeah, I've got five jobs today and I say, great, honey, I know that you're going to do a wonderful job. I hope it all goes really smoothly for you. Honey, I know that you're going to do a wonderful job. I hope it all goes really smoothly for you. Let me know if I can help you in any way. Can I help get you a lunch packed? Do you have sunscreen? Do you have water? You know I'm offering this love and support, but I'm not feeling the peace that says are you sure you can do it all? Don't do too much, don't get overwhelmed. You sure you need to take something off of your plate that is attaching to the chaos, that's attaching to the can't do it. I need to trust and see him as being able to make the decisions for himself and if he comes back today and it's been a heavy, intense day again I can decide where I'm going to interact with him in a loving, healthy way that is peaceful. And yeah, that must have been really hard. I'm sorry that happened for you.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:38

I'm mindful of not feeding the unhealthy thoughts, of not feeding the pained body, but allowing them to have their own experience. Totally, I'll be curious to see how the weekend goes with Bodhi and Alex just moved into a new apartment with his girlfriend and I didn't get caught up in. What are you using to move all your stuff? Did you pay this? Did you do that? Did you get your storage unit taken care of? I didn't ask any of those questions. I'm curious. I'm excited for them. This is excitement. I want to know what's happening for them in their joy of being in their new place together, and he gave me a little walk around tour on FaceTime.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:27

I'm more mindful about the words that I use, the communication that I have that isn't drawing up the chaos, that isn't drawing up dysfunction, that isn't feeding anything that I don't have any control of anyway, and just being there to be present with him in the excitement of it and the heaviness, the grown up life of your own place and what it costs and what they're doing, and being aware of the part of us that cares for the people in our lives and has an interest in what's happening for them, and noticing the difference between excitement and being excited and happy for someone, being excited and happy for ourselves doing things that really bring us joy and realizing that we can get stuck in chaos, thinking that that is bringing those same energies and when you have the clarity that says I'm not interested in the chaos anymore, but I want to bring fun and joy and excitement into my life and I want to foster that in the relationships of the people around me. You will see it differently, you will interact differently, you will change your perception. Becoming willing to live one's experience differently is the first step to discovering the freedom promised by detaching from upheavals in the lives of others. She says we are learning how to see and live differently, how to stay in our own lane, how to witness and observe what's going on around us, with detachment from love, trusting that everybody else's higher power has them and trusting that whatever's going on for them is their experience that they are to have. Can we let go of feeling like we're supposed to be involved in a way that changes it, fixes it, manipulates it, manages it? It's not easy, but the more that we can trust, the more that we can let go, the more that they take the reins of their own life. And when we take the reins of our life, we can think and feel and see differently and way that the moment is calling for. That is really spirit, speaking through us, living through us, offering the ability to be present in each moment exactly for what it is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:14

Her quote at the end of her meditation says every day offers so many opportunities to experience chaos, but for every one of them we can make the choice to be peaceful in that moment instead, not being attached, not having judgment, not being defensive, not taking it personally, not making assumptions, being in your own experience, recognizing that everybody else is in their experience and noticing where you're attaching to the chaos, and is this chaos fueling something that you need to look at even deeper. Are you ready to heal from that? Are you ready to let it go? Are you ready to step into your own healing as your number one priority in your soul recovery and let others have their own experience just as it is, and enjoy the excitement and joy and vivacious energy that can come in our lives and recognize that you can be there from a healthy place, letting go of dysfunction and chaos, letting go of other people's situations and choices.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:33

Until next time, namaste, thank you for listening to the Recover your Soul podcast and if you loved what you heard here, every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member and on this platform you can choose $5, $15 or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with. 15 or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey. I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month, support group. This is on zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the soul recovery message with even more people.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:31

We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to guided meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on insight timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about soul recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.