True Detachment (Meister Eckhart and the Love of God #7)
The Door and the Hinge
This the seventh in a series of meditations adapted from ‘Meister Eckhart and the Love of God’, a retreat I led at the Mandali Retreat Centre in northern Italy in September 2025.
Detachment in Meister Eckhart’s teaching doesn’t imply withdrawal from the world, coldness or lack of care. Rather, it means freedom from the burden of separation with its train of needs, fears and anxieties. In this exploration, we’ll investigate what it means to remain active in the world whilst retaining inner imperturbability – like a door swinging on its hinge, where the boards move back and forth but the hinge stays in one place. You’ll discover that true detachment doesn’t come from disciplining the mind, but from recognising something far deeper. When this recognition is complete, even prayer itself transforms into something you may not have imagined.
Let’s continue exploring one of the main themes in Meister Eckhart’s teaching, namely detachment.
It’s important to understand that what he means by ‘detachment’ doesn’t imply any withdrawal from the world. It doesn’t imply any lack of care or concern, nor any coldness or aloofness. It simply implies being free of the burden of separation with its train of needs, fears, anxieties, insecurities and so on.
