'Let Go Now' Detachment is knowing happiness is how we live our life, not how others live thiers.

Have you ever felt like your happiness or well-being was tied to someone else's choices or actions? Join us as we explore how detachment can liberate us from the emotional turmoil caused by how others choose to live their lives. Reading from Karen Casey's "Let Go Now: Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom," Rev Rachel reflect on the profound impact of choosing our own happiness in meditation #49 "Detachment is knowing that happiness is the by-product of how we live our lives, not haw others are living theirs". She shares personal insights and experiences, highlighting how detachment has been foundational in her Soul Recovery journey. Tune in to learn how to reclaim your power, cultivate inner peace, and step into your own light. Welcome to Soul Recovery a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. 

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.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Detachment and Happiness
• 12:11 Soul Recovery and Detachment Process
• 26:10 Join the Recovery Your Soul Community

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:00

Do you ever feel like your happiness or well-being is tied to somebody else and how they are choosing to live their life? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today in this episode, because detachment is this incredible tool, this powerful spiritual tool that allows us to start to let go of what is happening with or for others in their lives. And today we're reading out of Let Go Now, embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom by Karen Casey, and we're reading number 49 that says detachment is knowing that happiness is the byproduct of how we live our lives, not how others are living theirs. This concept of knowing that we get to choose our happiness. It comes when we make up our mind to be happy, to be open to our own experience, to choose how we're going to see it. There's profound changes that happen when we do this, and this is what we call soul recovery. This is the power of choosing our lives and letting go of others. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:16

My name is Rev 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. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast. I'm Rev Rachel and I am so thankful that you're here with me today to work on your soul recovery or even maybe discover what soul recovery is. This community continues to grow and I am so, so grateful for that, and I'm grateful for it because I'm doing this work too. I am in my own continued spiritual transformation, and when I know that we're in it together, when I know that I can share what's happening in my incredible changes that are happening around letting go of the outside world and other people's stories and other people's situations, and coming back and claiming my own happiness and healing my own beliefs and patterns and stories and wounds that had helped me to see in a certain way and now I'm choosing a different way to see knowing that I'm sharing these stories with you and these experiences with you helps me to not feel alone, because it can feel like a lonely path, and so this community is where we come together to share this journey, to know that the spiritual awakening is not a lonely path. It is something that we can continue to thrive and grow together. I'm so grateful for all of you who come to the once a month support group. It is going to be the first Monday of every month it's on zoom and the next one is actually the day that this episode is airing and you can register for free on the website recoveryoursoulnet and in this hour together we come together as a community and witness each other. I'll talk about a topic and then we have a question and answer period and then we move into small groups where we can share our own stories. It really is this place where it doesn't matter what's happening in your life or who your friends or what your job is. In that hour you are just part of the soul recovery community, seen and loved and witnessed, and it's so powerful. I hope that every one of you that's listening today will attend on tonight the night of the show and, if you're listening later, register and come to the next one. So it's this really beautiful group together.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:07

I wanted to come back to detachment. Detachment is such a powerful part of soul recovery and continues to be the most listened to episode is the first one I did in that first season of detachment. Between the podcast and on YouTube. It's been listened to over, I think, 40,000 times or something some huge amount. And that tells me something. That tells me that we're really working on this, taking our power back, and that is a foundational piece of our community. And so today I'm going to come back to Let Go Now Embrace Detachment as a Path to Freedom by Karen Casey, and I love this book because it has 200 different meditations and each one of them is really this reflection of how we can use detachment in our life. And soul recovery is not a unique concept. It's just something that I've pulled together to use as a term for a lot of different incredible, wonderful spiritual teachings that are around us stepping into our power, our wholeness, remembering who we are, remembering how we connect to ourselves and letting go of the outside world. So I just opened it up today to a random page and what really drew me was this one number 49.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 5:31

Detachment is knowing that happiness is the byproduct of how we live our lives, not how others are living theirs, and I thought perfect, this is a perfect one for me to read and reflect on today, because I continue to work on this for myself of creating my own experience, my own happiness that what I think and feel and believe is going to be what I receive, what we think we get more of. So when I know that I am cultivating my own happiness, that I can choose that in my life and slowly detaching and letting go of the people in our lives who may be making different choices they get to make the choice. So I'm going to read and reflect and we'll just see what spirit has in charge for us today. So I'm just going to read and reflect and we'll just see what spirit has in charge for us today. So I'm just going to read and reflect and we're going to see what source and spirit has in store for us today.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:32

Karen Casey says allowing others to be glad or sad and knowing it doesn't relate to us is real freedom. But coming to understand this way of life takes time, a willingness to believe in this as a possibility and then perseverance. What I love about this just from the very beginning I love the way that she really brings in all these concepts is that reminder that it's freedom when we realize that we are powerless over everything outside of ourselves, that we aren't in charge of somebody else's happiness or gladness, that it doesn't actually relate to us she uses the word knowing it doesn't relate to us is real freedom, and that it takes time, a willingness to believe this possibility and have perseverance. None of this happens overnight. There can be very strong awakenings that shake us and move us into a much broader understanding in a very rapid period of time, but ultimately, it's the ability to continue to open and be consistent in these beliefs and to believe, a willingness to believe that this is possible. So I love this. As a start, she says if you develop this awareness instantaneously, but whenever we accept this as a path for living, it becomes the first day of real freedom that we'll ever experience.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:01

I recently was listening to something and I can't remember if I said this in another podcast. I'm sorry I say so many things in so many places, but it was talking about how do you balance spirituality in life, and the answer was there is no balance, there is only being it, and what I love about this is that what we're working on in soul recovery is this is a process. This is a process to wholeness. This is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life, and when we realize that we are going to accept this as a path for living, it becomes the first day of freedom, because today is the only day. There are no attachments to the past unless we choose to think of them, unless we choose to repeat them, unless we choose to perseverate around them. So every day is a new opportunity to step into a new way of being, and when we realize these transformational concepts around change of perception, you can indeed leave the past behind and realize that you are choosing freedom today. You are choosing freedom and healing today, and that's all that matters.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:19

Reading on, she says tying our happiness to anyone else means we probably also tie our sadness or confusion or depression to them too, and many of us live this way, or did I have to admit that this was my path for many years. Whenever anyone else said or did, however, anyone else felt was what determined my emotions. Can you relate to this? Whatever anyone else said or did, or how anyone felt, was what determined my emotions. It's a bit embarrassing, she says, to say that I lived this way until my late 30s. And if I'd not been introduced to a 12-step program, then I still might be tying my star to someone else's dream or nightmare. My path was not unusual. I know many others struggled with the same issue and still do. Our culture encourages it. But we can live differently. I know because I do now. And then she says at the quote on the bottom happiness, as Abe Lincoln said, comes when we make up our minds to be happy. What freedom and joy this ensures. It allows us to model happiness for others too.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:35

I love this concept of tying your happiness and also this concept of tying your star to someone else's dream, because ultimately, what ends up happening when you realize? What does detachment mean? It means that we are untethering, untangling, untying ourselves from others, and it isn't easy. And I think what's beautiful about this journey that we're all on together is nobody is saying to stop being human, no one is saying to not feel the feelings, no one is saying to deny your connection to other people or deny the importance that they are in your life. This healthy detachment is saying we do not need to rely on others for our well-being, for our mental health, for our happiness, for our how we determine, how we see ourselves. We can see that there is separation and through that we end up taking our power back, we end up realizing that we can choose to live a different way, we can choose to see it a different way, we can choose to be in our bodies in a different way. This, for me, has been so foundational because I still have that same husband that I had 32 years ago and the same one that I had when I was really in the depths of my sadness, and I still have the same kids who I love, love, love so much with all my heart and are having real life situations.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:11

I hope you listened to the episode a few weeks ago around Bodhi and his choice to be sober right now, and I felt so much connection and gratitude and my heart was just so full hearing him be able to really speak from his higher self, from his wise self, and have that clarity around how addiction has been negative for him. And yet, at the same time, I watch myself, my old self. My old self wants to attach my well-being, my happiness. If I can be okay on whether he continues this sober journey. I want him so much to feel good about himself. I don't understand sometimes why he can get so overwhelmed, why he can get so down on himself when what I see is this bright, shining, amazing human being.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:09

And yet, even after that episode aired, a week later or so, we were talking on the phone and he was in complete overwhelm complete overwhelm around everything that he needed to do with his job, what was going on in his life personally. How hard it was to continue to choose sobriety and to not want to check out. And I found myself in that place where I had to do my work for myself, to choose detachment, to love him so much, to truly love him so much, and send him light, to send him compassion, to send him my best energy that I could, and to not see or attach to the parts of him that are complicated and sticky and wounded. To continue to see the light in him and, at the same time, to not diminish his feelings, to not try to get him to spiritually bypass what's going on for him and not actually recognize that he's feeling overwhelmed and to have gratitude that he's calling me, to have somebody to talk to about it. My children are my greatest teachers in terms of this detachment, of knowing that when we choose our own happiness, when I choose my own well-being, that that is what is truly going to bring me joy in my life and that through that, I'm actually releasing them to have their own experience for whatever it is them to have their own experience for whatever it is, and that could be that it's hard for them.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:59

The new first step in soul recovery is recognizing our suffering, and it was really important to me to make the shift in the nine steps of soul recovery because it became really clear to me that this place where we recognize our suffering, we become aware of our dissatisfaction and suffering and we see that it's caused by our perceptions. We see that it's caused by our beliefs. We see that it's caused by the patterns that we continue to perpetuate. If we cannot acknowledge this need for change and understand understand that we need to look at how we choose to see it then we have all of our energy on everybody else around us saying, man, if you would just get it together, if you would just be happy, if you could just appreciate what you have, if you could just do this, if you could be like that, if you could be this kind of a husband, then I could finally be happy.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:52

Well, you're tying your star to somebody else, you're tying your emotions to somebody else and you know who they are. They're just human beings. They're just human beings having a complex experience and we forget that they are in their own sphere of pain and beliefs and stories. We want them to show up for us in a way that is going to benefit us, and it's a lot of pressure on them that we're exuding on everybody to let us be okay or not. We're exuding on everybody to let us be okay or not.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:30

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Well, I am here to support you as your spiritual coach. Visit the website to book one-on-one coaching sessions with me as we transform your life through working the nine steps of soul recovery. You can also choose to work the steps on your own through the modules at your own pace. I'm excited to also be announcing that there are retreats every year, both in Colorado and other places in the country, workshops and events, and I hope that you also will join us the first Monday of every month from 6 to 7 pm Mountain Standard Time for the free Zoom support group. This is an amazing place for us to connect, learn and share our stories. And don't forget to join the private Facebook group for soul recovery, inspiration, connection, answering each other's questions and giving shout outs. I thank you for supporting this podcast, either by being a Patreon member, apple podcast subscriber and getting that extra episode every Friday, or by your one timetime donations or your small monthly donations that are found in the show notes. You are helping spread the soul recovery message and supporting this community. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet for dates, times, everything that's happening, register for the support group and how to stay connected. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul. How to stay connected. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:57

Detachment does not mean that you don't love somebody. It does not mean that you revel in their suffering. It doesn't mean that you are snubbing them or allowing them to be punished for their own behaviors. Cause and effect are real. Cause and effect is how life works. When we show up for ourselves, when we show up for work, when we show up and do what we need to do in our lives from a place of wholeness, things start to manifest for us. Things start to show up for us. We start to bring towards us the things that we need to see that align with where we are need to see that align with where we are and when we show up in a not healthy place where we think everything's a problem, where we think the people around us are terrible people or hard on us or mean guess what You're going to get that You're going to get more of what you are asking for how you see it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:47

So when you realize that you create the life that you want from the thoughts that you think and this is a big one, people, this is something that took me a long time to get out of the victim mentality that said you got to be kidding me. I'm thinking good thoughts, I'm a good person, I know what I want, I'm kind, I'm loving Not to the people around me. I was nitpicking, I was controlling, I was constantly disappointed, I was trying to make everything be a certain way and underneath was this person who was just so uncomfortable with everyone's discomfort. You know, I sat with my journal the other morning and I was really reflecting on my experience because so much is shifting within me. It's been six and a half years since I've been really doing this soul recovery work and I see everything so differently now. I feel everything so differently now and the truth is, I feel deeper than I ever felt before and sometimes it hurts. Sometimes those feelings that I had worked so hard to try to temper, which are grief or disappointment or sadness or fear, those are real feelings that are here to help me grow as part of my soul's experience.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:18

I believe that our souls are here on earth school to learn. We're not here to make others perform for us. We're here to have our own healing journey, our own awareness, to step into our own power, to step into our own light, to realize that we get to choose how we're going to see it. So I was being tender to myself and I was asking my inner self some questions around. Where did I get off track? Where was the place where I started to feel like I was alone and move into the dysfunction of real heavy people pleasing and codependency and control addiction? Where was that so that I can go back and attend to that part of myself? There was definitely this strong moment and I've talked about this before if you've heard the podcast, so if it's a repeated story, I only have so many stories but when my husband was working first as a as a builder, and started doing construction and stuff he had been an architect and he hated being in the office and we had had our first son, alex.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:34

And then we started dreaming and you know, dreams are this beautiful thing that you can actually allow yourself to dream. And we bought a piece of property up in the mountains and we were starting to dream about, like, making this house and building this little, super simple, super simple house, and that ended up morphing into my mom buying a bigger piece of property and that we could put the energy on that, since she actually had the money to build a house and we didn't. And when you look at how our lives work, that if we start seeing that everything is actually indeed happening for us and not to us, we start seeing that all of it is this dance between human beings and their experiences and their wishes and their desires. And in that dance, my husband manifested what was really important to him, which was to be able to design and build an entire home, and it just happened to be that it was really far away, two hours away in the mountains, and would take him away during this time of me having two young kids. That was when I was pregnant with Bodhi and when Bodhi was a baby.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:46

And when I look at it from a new soul recovery place and I see it with the compassionate eyes that can see everyone's experience within it, and I recognize the places where I made choices around my happiness being tied to somebody else and how that other person was showing up for me and the fear and the pain and the disappointment that I felt was rightfully so for that period of time in my life, for what I had had a dream of, what it would be like having young babies, being in a family, being supported. And so when I attend to that part of myself and I detach from I love this concept of detachment too I detach from the place that says somebody else harmed me on purpose and I realized that this experience was part of my journey and I, for the first time, was able to look at that experience and have even deeper compassion for my husband and what he needed and wanted at that time. You know he didn't want to have kids right away, like I did, so he had done that for me and he really needed to go off and live his life and have this dream and do this thing. That was important to him and for me it shifted and changed everything because I was really attached and tethered to him. I was tied to his emotions, his feelings, his star, his dreams, and it's okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:27

I think the thing in soul recovery that's so important is, instead of us saying I think the thing in soul recovery that's so important is, instead of us saying, oh, this was good or this was bad, or this was right or this is wrong, it happened, it was, it existed. We have these situations in our lives that are complex from someone else's dreams, when we can detach from someone else's failures or successes and realize that those are theirs to have and their experiences to have, and we come and we stand in our own power and say where was I for myself there? Where was I for myself and for me? I can see that if I step out of my pain body and move into my wholeness I raised two little babies for a couple years, all by myself for the most part, and they're beautiful children. He hadn't been able to go off and have that experience for himself. There might have been resentment that would have been built up, that would have expanded in our lives in some other way. That would have been really bad, you know, I mean you just start looking at it in a different perception, a different way to see. It is as we choose to see it. And so when I look at just these young people in their lives, each getting what they wanted I wanted a family and he wanted to have this building experience to grow himself and his career. We each got what we wanted. Now it created complexity, and that's life. That's what happens. He ended up drinking a lot more when he was up there.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:10

I ended up, you know, starting to have my own separation, worries and fears we can attach to whatever is happening in our lives. Whatever meaning we decide, it is going to back up. You know, brene Brown is famous for saying you will get what you're looking for. If you're looking to have someone prove to you that you're unworthy, go out there and find it. You will find it. And if you want to have people prove to you that you are worthy and wonderful, you will find that too. And if I want to go back and look at my life, I will prove to myself whatever I choose to see in those memories, from whatever perception I'm choosing to see it. And as I do, more and more soul recovery, I'm releasing and letting go and having soul recovery, forgiveness, which is to see it from a eye of compassion for everyone involved, to release all harm and to just notice these human beings in this situation and to see the patterns and beliefs that I set up within those stories that I continue to go out and grab evidence of.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:28

So now, when I look at Rich's moods or my kids moods, whether they're in a happy mood or in a sad mood, and I recognize the part of me that still has that connection. That's important. That's a very different than being entwined, to being really enmeshed in somebody else's life. To be able to see it and to be able to have connection and awareness and joy for them, or to have empathy and sadness for them, is very different than thinking that you must fix it, you must do something about it or you're only as happy as your least happy family member. They get to choose this power that we have to see that our happiness is our choice.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:25

Like Abe Lincoln said, our happiness is our choice and it's not about spiritually bypassing it and pretending like nothing hard is going on, because there's almost always something hard going on. It's around detaching from the belief that somebody else is responsible for your well-being in any shape or form. And when we can have that level of detachment, we let everyone else have their responsibility for their cause and effect and we begin to recognize that we choose our cause and effect. And lo and behold, when you show up for yourself, when you come from your higher self, when you do this spiritual awakening and start letting go of all of the grime, all the sludge, all the grievance and the shame and the pain and the wounding, you step into your wholeness and the universe starts to show up for you in ways that are so amazing. And it's perseverance, just like she says in the book, it's a willingness to believe, to believe that this is available to you, to believe that you are being held by something even greater still.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:42

Whatever that is for you to let go of control, to recognize that we're powerless over everything outside of ourselves, but to stand in our power, with our higher power, with our knowing that we are resourced with everything that we need and that through that we can trust that those in our life, if they so choose, have that same resource and ability to step into their strength, into who they are and who they choose to be. Our children are not here for us. Our husbands are not here for us, our friends are not here for us God, that's hard to hear, right? We're all in it together. We are a community of souls, collective souls, who are here to have relationship and hopefully the healthiest, most true, connected, deep relationship. But we are not here to save anyone else. We are here to remember our own strength and wholeness and through that we see it in the other. We see it in the other.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:00

So, coming back to Karen Casey and this beautiful reading on detachment is knowing that happiness is the byproduct of how we live our lives, not how others are living theirs. Happiness comes when we make up our minds to be happy. And if you want any help with this, I'm telling you come, do some spiritual coaching with me. It's amazing what happens in these sessions, whether you just come for one session to talk about a current situation, but if you're really ready to step into the nine step process of soul recovery with me, transformation is profound. Because you're ready, you're ripe, you're willing, you're open and I'm just a guide and a channel for spirit to speak through me to you, for you to remember your wholeness 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 On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 32:35

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. 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.