My Experience With Attachment
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
When I awoke in June of 2000, the freeing from attachments was the only aspect of my shift that progressed in stages. The first part was easy. Ridding myself of any attachment to material objects was almost immediate. I was a frequent traveler to the dump as I had lots of “stuff” to dump to lighten my load. I was lucky in that I had never really had a need to buy things or have any inanimate object that I was endeared to. I must have learned this lesson in a previous lifetime.I had a large house that was filled with things accumulated for 20 years from five children and a wife that loved to buy things. My untying from things was not done with an indifference to having stuff but was done with an obsession to free myself from having to look after it and see it everyday. I needed to declutter my life and my space around me. I didn’t even know what fen shui was but I could certainly feel the desire for free flowing energy. So as I said, it was easy to rid myself of the things that felt like they were attached to me. I eventually got down to a suitcase of clothes and a guitar and had never felt so free.
The next aspect of freeing myself was to free myself from expectations. Planning was something that didn’t make any sense to me anymore. I realized that plans and the expectation of outcomes were concepts that I had previously been attached to. It is common human behavior to plan but of course along with my awakening came the knowing that I wasn’t human but a spiritual being, so human behavior didn’t make sense anymore. Eliminating my attachment to the future and just allowing things to unfold as they will was a tremendously freeing experience. Living in the moment without dwelling in the past or worrying about the future made it possible to quiet my mind giving me the ability to enjoy every second as it was presented. A huge part of the inner peace that was present for me.
It was hard on the people around me though as they were all used to making plans. I would never commit to being at any activities that were in the future, preferring to wait till the moment to choose the action to take. It wasn’t long until I was no longer asked or invited to any pre-planned events. It works so much better to just watch and see how things line up before choosing whether to act. Looking for the flow of events that is always present and following it.
My attachment to people followed next and was really almost simultaneous to the other aspects of my complete shift of perspective. This form of attachment has a few layers. The attachment to a mate or spouse is one part that can be easily understood and reasoned.
I didn’t have a spouse at the time of my awakening but a few months later I was in a relationship with a person that had a tough time with my perspective of being unattached. This behavior, from a human perspective, can appear as uncaring, but it’s essence is not from an attitude of indifference but from the knowing that each person is an entity of their own god self and whether they choose to stay with you or not is their sovereign choice. The outcome of this relationship for me was not something that I was concerned with one way or the other. Whatever would happen in the relationship would produce a feeling of “and so it is.” This is not the norm and ended up being the cause for the ending of our relationship. This attitude makes it difficult to be with anyone that doesn’t share my attitude about how a relationship is experienced.
As I have discussed the attachment that is the hardest to grasp and the toughest to release is the attachment to “our” children.
This form of attachment is firmly ingrained in human behavior and anyone that suggests the releasing of our children is usually written off as crazy or weird or both. And I have been called both by many that have known me. This attachment that I and the majority of parents have, took me almost three years into my awakening process before I realized that what I was doing was no different than any other form of attachment that I had previously examined and released.
I traveled to Kona Hawaii in March of 2003 to take my first Overlight training. I was bringing my two daughters aged 17 and 19 over to spend a couple weeks in Waikiki after my time in Kona. I had been very lucky as a child. My parents loved Hawaii and took our family there several times. I had great memories of my times in Waikiki and wanted my girls to get a taste of what I had experienced as a young adult. I had booked a hotel close to the beach and had formulated a vision of how it would be. I was attached to the expectation of them doing everything I had done.
It was March in Canada with below freezing temperatures and I wanted them to bask in the sun and enjoy the 80 degree weather. I wanted them to enjoy the beach and meet new people from faraway places. Enjoy the beautiful scenery. Play in the sand and surf. All the wonderful things that I enjoyed as a youth.
17 and 19 years old. Great ages to experience a new place.
All they wanted to do was party all night and sleep all day. They didn’t even see the sun for the first week. The air-conditioned room and the TV were the only scenery they took in.
This caused me frustration. Since my awakening, frustration was not something that was part of the whole enlightened perspective that had become my life since 2000. I tried to get them to change their schedules. To get up and go to the beach and enjoy the sun and ocean. I beat my head against the wall for the first week. Then it hit me. I was attaching myself to their experience. I was trying to get them to conform to my idea of how to enjoy Hawaii. This was no different than any other aspect of attachment. I was carrying these expectations around with me. They were dragging me down.
I realized that it didn’t matter that my intentions for them were for “their own good”, as is usually the case with parental intention. I came to the knowing that I wouldn’t be free of attachment until I truly surrendered to the fact that they are their own beings. That I cannot change their experience in life to match what I expect it to be. That they will choose to do what they want to anyway regardless of what I want. Why should I look at this any different than any other aspect of attachment.
After this realization hit me I backed right off trying to control their time in Hawaii. I freed myself from attaching to my perceived expectation of how they needed to act to enjoy the vacation. Freed myself from carrying expectations of how they should be.
The last two weeks were wonderful for all of us. I regained my inner peace. They eventually started going to the beach. It was a great time and things after that flowed.
This may not be a great example of the attachment we have to “our” offspring, but for me it was the final release that I needed to completely absorb the concept of freeing my self. When we arrived back home I continued with this perspective and it made all our lives so much easier. With me backing off the incessant nagging for them to do this or do that just because I had thought it was the way to do things it gave us all the space we needed to be who we were.
This didn’t mean that I didn’t care about their welfare it simply meant that without the desire to control their lives, my interaction with them gained the flow that I had experienced in the other aspects of my everyday life.
It may be hard to look at children as attachments. But how can this form of attachment be any different? I have always found that there is a consistency to all the attributes of spiritual enlightenment. A consistency that applies, when tested, to any subject, no matter how ingrained it is or how unthinkable it is to discuss.
Attachment to a car or a pet is one thing but releasing our children from us is a much more difficult subject to broach. Yet I believe that by untying the rope that ties our children to us, we empower them to be the spiritual beings that they are while freeing us to watch and enjoy them as their paths unfold.
As a attribute of humans on the new planet earth, the loss of attachment to anything outside our selves will allow us all to be free.
Related posts
Attaching To “Our” Children
Many of us are attached to the past. This attachment can cause a lack of awareness of what is happening to them right now. They desire to label or define themselves by things that have happened to them or others in the past. They live in the past. Some long to change the past. Most live in fear that what happened in the past can and will happen again. This fear inhibits them from enjoying life in the present. They have a blind spot when discussing things that are happening to them now because they relate everything to past experiences and outcomes. They are who they were and not who they are now. This attachment can become obsessive for them causing them great difficulties relating to people or events in the present.
The opposite form of this attachment is living life in the future. They have expectations of how things will be or should be in their lives. They always are looking ahead and planning what will be instead of enjoying what is. Of course with these expectations can come great letdowns if the results are not realized. Anxiety and worry about what if this happens or what if that happens control their thoughts and actions in the present making it impossible to relax and enjoy life in the now. This is a form of attachment that is abound with fear. Constantly playing the “what if” scenario can precipitate a never ending cycle of trying to foresee what “will” happen to them instead of seeing what “is” happening.
These examples of attachment are basically the same. They are fear based and inhibit the enjoyment of the present. They occupy a large amount of their thoughts leaving little time for seeing their present situation.
The new planet earth will bring an awareness that the only thing that matters is the present. The only thing that is real is right now. The past cannot be changed and the future is yet to be created so why even think about them. Can you imagine how much clearer our minds can be if we stop living in the past or worrying about the future!
The last example of attachment is the toughest. It is a concept that one has to really dig deep to adopt it. The attachment to “our” children.
As parents we like to think of children as “ours”. Society dictates to us that we are responsible for their behaviors and the kind of people that they will become. We take ownership of them and attach their every word and action to us. In divorce situations they are often perceived as things that belong to one parent or the other. We have expectations of them. We impose our beliefs on them. We do not recognize their individuality until some law says they we can. We worry about what other people think of them as they are extensions of our selves. We spend sleepless nights worrying about what they are doing. When they don’t act the way we expect them to we get angry with them and try to force them into doing what we think they should.
Why is this example of attachment any different than any other I have offered in these articles? Are children “things” that we own? Are they not human angels that create their own realities like we do? Can we really expect to change them to do exactly what we want them to?
Anyone that is or has been a parent may relate to this easier than someone who is not. Does it sometimes feel like we are banging our heads against the wall when we try to get children to live up to our expectations? When a child really wants to do something do they usually find a way? Can we tie them up in their rooms and watch them 24 hours a day?
This attachment causes more grief and worry to people than any other. We are programmed to believe that this attachment is one that can never change. It is our duty.
The new planet earth will bring an awareness that children are no different than anyone else. Age is an arbitrary number that means very little. They are individual souls with individual paths that they are creating for themselves. These paths are no different than an adults path. They have highs and lows and they need to learn lessons just like any adult. They, to me, have more insight that lots of adults and I like to refer to young children as “real people.”
I look at children and think that this is what the new human will be like. Uninhibited. Saying whatever they feel, not concerned with how they will be perceived by others. Thoroughly enjoying the present without any worry of the future or attachment to their past. Using their intuition to feel out people and situations. Great teachers for how to enjoy life and to be. Wise souls until we program them and fill them full of rules. How can we own them?
When we will realize that we can not change their path for them. All we can do is love them unconditionally and be there when they ask for help or guidance. But only if they ask, not to try to impose our will on them. We will realize that we do not own them just as we will realize we cannot own any person. When we realize that what they choose to do is not a reflection on our abilities as parents or people. When the practice of attaching the actions, the words or the outcomes of “our” children to us is seen as a futile waste of energy. When we realize the anxiety that we as parents experience through our perceived need to be judged as “good parents.” When the new human perspective of shedding attachments is here, ours and the children’s lives will enable all of us to be free to be.
As I have said, this aspect or description of attachment is the toughest one to examine and possibly change as we are so programmed to be “responsible” for our children. If we can only understand that by claiming this responsibility, it only serves to take the children’s power away from them accomplishing imbalance for them and us as parents.
Attachment is ownership. Ownership of anything outside our selves will have no place on the new planet earth. When the Europeans came to North America in the 15th century and told the native people that they were claiming ownership of the land, the natives could not understand what that meant. They didn’t believe that someone could own mother earth. The concept of owning anything was so incomprehensible to them that they, in most cases, just allowed it to happen without resisting.
Ownership breeds separation. It creates fences and borders. It starts wars to defend land. Separation is not a part of unity consciousness. Once we shift from duality consciousness to Christ consciousness, the practice of attachment will follow. Freedom from attachment to all things is the fourth attribute for the human on the new planet earth. The desire to be free from the need for “stuff” may be the major push that will evolve us into the next level of human evolution.
It appears to be coming to a head right now as more and more people are realizing that the accumulation of things doesn’t give us fulfillment. We are getting very close to the critical mass needed for all of us to step up to next level. We will be doing this together. With all of us having the attributes that I have been describing in this article series. If we can eliminate all the examples of attachment that I have discussed, the resulting inner peace and quietness of mind that will follow will allow us to enjoy every second of every day on the new planet earth.
Related posts
Subscribe by email
Recent Posts
- Change Is Finally Here - No Not Obama
- It’s 10/10/10 - Time For A Change
- Is The Universe Aligning For An Obama Win?
- Science Studying Spirit - Out-Of-Body Experiences
- “Healing The Rift” Between Science And Spirituality
- Science And Spirituality Joining In The Search For God
- Do You Believe In Yourself? Don’t Ask Me
- Transition Of The Soul - A Death Story
Sponsors
Community
