Non-attachment ✨
Have you experienced the dark road of attachment?
We humans, consistent with our animal kingdom, seek pleasure and avoid pain. We find ways to get needs met with varying degrees of awareness, to that end effectively forming specific relationships to self and other (a person, thing or concept).
Deeply formed attachments are bi-directional - a pull (attraction) and push (aversion) and characterized by a sense of discontent where a person feels unfulfilled, unsatisfied.. If we are not paying attention, these patterned relationships can repeat and self-reinforce with the seduction of familiarity. Alcoholism, porn addiction, and co-dependence are just a few expressions of this dynamic. This maladaptive relating includes healthy intentions, take for example orthorexia, a condition where a person is anxiously attached to healthy foods. Well-developed attachments can cause considerable functional impairment and mental suffering when our self-directed perceived needs at the core (aka selfing) and the reality of inter-being is ignored.
The good news is that the higher the awareness, the lower unconscious habit patterns can operate. Non-attachment is what happens when applied awareness causes us to either: 1. not attach to something in the first place or 2. release an attachment. If we pause with awareness, and point the mind to our intended path and purpose, we may encounter contented inter-being. For the sake of simplicity let's say our path and purpose is happiness. A simple prompt may be: do my thoughts, speech, and action align with and lead toward happiness?
How do we relate to ourself? How do we relate to others? Does our intention match our highest values? Consider your day.. how much time is spent in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain for ourselves? Are we truly relating to things as they are or just looking out for #1? What if we peeled the onion to the core of experience and practiced sitting with things as they are, inter-be, without the push and pull.. we may find it to be a place of non-attachment, contentment and ease.
Attachment (of any kind) comes from our relationship to what is happening to the degree we practice that relationship. When we relax the relationship, we open the mind to potential. And so we ask: "Do my thoughts, speech and action match my path an purpose?" and let our wisdom lead the way.
Non-attachment doesn't mean we don't care, it just means that we aren't jerked around by the limits of selfing. We can deeply care without expecting anyone or anything to fulfill our purpose, knowing from direct experience, that contentment lies within.
Image source: Creative Commons inspired by the Matrix:
"You've been down that road, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends." - Trinity to Neo
#attachment, #aversion, #selfing, #freedom, #awareness
