Detachment and ascendent spirituality believe we can liberate ourselves in the present by detaching from and rising above difficulty. This is transcendence.
In contrast, body-centered emotional work embraces and works through difficulty to come out the other side, more integrated and whole. This is transformation.
Detachment and its spiritual bypassing leave the body behind by ignoring the shadow, which lives in the body.
Embodiment welcomes of all of the body, especially shadow pain, and delivers whole-body and whole-heartedness by working with and through emotional injury.
Detachment and its mindfulness, however, do not necessarily work against embodiment. We can utilize both to notice and navigate shadow work. This is genuine integration—mind and body working harmoniously as Yin and Yang—in full capacity.
According to Yin-Yang theory, when Yin and Yang support one another this way, they mutually enhance and regenerate one another.
The result is spiraling up by first growing down. Transcendence and the mind and transformation and its embodiment don’t have to be “versus.” They, in fact, need one another.
This is the Deep Work, the subject of my next book.
