When you realize you have done harm to another and, in doing so, you can see some of the depth of their hurt and pain, you naturally want to connect and apologize. This is a natural reaction from your heart. When you feel this, you may experience a lot of layers of your conditioning: the fear of being perceived as weak, the fear of confessing and not being right, the fear of losing power and control, and so many worries that arise from the heart movement to amend. All of this usually happens at a superficial level where the mind-ego struggles with being exposed so that the false identities might be caught and seen.

There is a much deeper aspect that you should always connect with before contacting another person, which is why you are reaching out. Sometimes, you feel so guilty about what happened that you want to connect with the other, ask for forgiveness, and receive absolution. You want the other to set you free. In this action, you are pressing the other, disregarding how they feel about what happened—simply asking for forgiveness to feel better about yourself.

This moment of asking for forgiveness is a moment of true surrender to consequence, of hearing the other more than being heard, of accepting the other’s unwillingness to forgive and respecting their experience. It is a moment of being willing to offer your presence for the betterment of the relationship, of offering selflessness in that moment.

Our society, culture, and modern way of living have our nervous system at a maxed-out capacity daily. Also, we have been conditioned to focus on what is happening externally, which should somehow shift whatever discomfort is present internally. This overstimulated lifestyle has our bodies in a state of numbness to at least survive the perceived danger, threat, and chaos in the world, our country, our city, our work, our family, our friends, and our health. If we also add that trauma is a prevalent and pervasive experience for human beings, numbness is just a natural response to it all.

Moving your attention and efforts towards your inner world is a higher response and a natural way to recenter yourself: your body, mind, and emotions. Human beings are sentient, which is natural for us to feel. Even not feeling anything, feeling a lack is a way of sharing what we are experiencing in sentient terms. When you move your attention inwards, you see that everything that bothers you seems to threaten you or you have a problem with is a messenger with a higher message. Something within needs to be resolved, healed, or integrated, and that’s what the messenger brings. It’s wise to follow that guidance and discover what your soul needs to feel centered and present.

A lot of the ancient spiritual traditions – and some modern ones as well, ask for you to be detached. When you hear the word detachment, you likely assume it implies letting go. At a superficial level, the mind understands this as letting go of all the material things that are holding you down or keeping you away from discovering your truth. So the mind starts making lists of the things it is attached to, believing that releasing them might finally end the suffering and pain it’s trying to avoid. This causes pain, more attachment, and confusion that creates a more significant distance from you to realize who you are.

A deeper understanding of detachment means letting go of expectations, certainty, the need to control and predict what will happen, releasing the others, and releasing the attachment we have with our mind and ego. It’s an ever-occurring detachment because we are full of personalities, beliefs, ideas, presumptions, and fears. It means seeing how this binds us; by seeing this, the essence of who you are can rise and be.