Secure Detachment
The foundations for Secure Detachment are what I offer in the Village Principles Masterclass.
The Village Principles are the three principles of adulthood.
I've been saying America does not reliably produce adults, but when I say it to non-Americans, they claim it’s true about their own culture as well. So maybe we could say western culture or colonizer culture does not reliably produce adults.
Secure Detachment is the way I relate with others from adulthood.
Adulthood is what I call the radical responsibility I take for myself, which little in this culture prepared me to cultivate, value, or understand, and which can seem to be thin on the ground, even in rooms full of grown-ups. I had to want it, find it, cultivate it for myself from esoteric sources. Now I'm attempting to be a source, so that others can have an easy time of achieving adulthood and leverage their efforts toward the challenges THAT represents.
Attachment issues, childhood wounding, getting needs met, getting security, getting safety, having feelings heard and validated by others—these are concerns one faces on the way to adulthood.
Adulthood is what it is to Have responsibility for these concerns.
Much of relating between grown-ups as taught by other grown-ups is about capitalizing on being grown without taking full responsibility for being an adult. Those who are grown have privileges not afforded to children, including the privilege to control and manipulate others more broadly and effectively to get their needs met.
Those who are adults have responsibility for and over and to their own lives, which could also be called freedom, agency, agility, choice.
Someone who's grown and exercising their privilege to exert power, control, and manipulation over others is NOT free. They are bound to this control as the only way they know how to get nourishment. The jailer is always as stuck as the prisoner, sometimes even more so. The situation is just as tragic.
I say the world does not reliably produce adults because I want to be clear—I don't believe this is something grown-ups should have or even could have done already. I want to make the necessary information available, not condemn any path or any current circumstance.
It is only natural that one would flounder, given the information available. I can't see another way out of controlling others, with only the information offered by a control-society, but to make control more benevolent until one finds the nourishment to choose another way.
The elusiveness of adulthood is contrived, like every other element of scarcity in our current global landscape. The scarcity of adulthood and information about how to achieve it is engineered to serve tyranny and control. It serves all those who stand to gain from a disempowered populace; it serves all those who have something to lose if the populace is free and empowered.
The elusiveness of adulthood is conveniently self-perpetuating. If my parents weren't taught, how could they teach me? If the other grownups in the room didn't learn, where would I see it modeled? If nobody else is doing it, I might seem crazy, most of all to myself!
Yet another reason why the floundering makes perfect sense, why it is not contemptible or condemnable, but a courageous defiance on the path to getting free.
Those who are struggling with their own emotional landscape and getting validated and heard by others are ON THEIR WAY, the best way they know how to be.
Those who are trying to get their needs met in partnership or other close relationships are bravely advocating for something they've never seen or known.
Those who are addressing their childhood wounding and attachment issues are clearly willing to take up the mantle of their own responsibility.
What I want is to offer the updated premises that will allow such individuals to actually succeed. I want to offer the structure in which the Wanting can shift into actual Receiving and Having, and I've watched it happen fast.
A now-close friend I met first as a client said that the 15 minute session she did with me (the only one we ever did) helped her more than years of therapy.
A woman who went in deep on the 12-week Village Principles teaching revolutionized her whole life in just the first few weeks. She reported to me that she arrived in a place where she could not remember her reasoning for controlling and blaming others—but she was never bad, stupid, or wrong. She was never ill-intended; she was doing the best she knew how with the information she'd been provided. When she had better information, she was able, finally, rapidly, to succeed where she'd been valiantly trying for years.
Several people who have only read my writing have slurped up these principles from between the lines and tell me regularly the impact that this information has had on their life and their personal growth process. They're finally attending to generative problems, rather than working hard on busted premises. They're in the freedom of responsibility, doing the work of being responsible, rather than the prison of control, doing the work to get free of control.
Those who recognize the truth in the principles I offer experience instant relief. It's like clean cold water. It's like breathing fresh air. It's like "aha!" and then it's like "duh."
What I offer is that: truths to be recognized and practical ways it looks to live with those essential truths integrated into every here and now.
It makes it all so much easier!
It makes it clear that what truly is hard is worth the effort, and offers the tools you need to be effective in every worthy effort.
It takes away the suffering, but leaves you with the pain and the tools you need to manage it.
I'm sorry, love, you were never gonna be rid of the pain.
