January 2004 PlanetLightworker Editor’s Letter

Detaching from Attachments

I recently detached from two relationships that are very precious to me. It was not easy to release them and let go, and it took me several weeks and a lot of angst, heartache, and sadness to do so. Now that I am on the other side of it, and have redefined the meaning of those former attachments, I am free and ready for something new. This letter is a result of what I learned…

Have I ever really “owned” anything? I thought I did, but in retrospect, perhaps the reverse is true – I have been “owned” by the very things that I thought belonged to me. Attachment is my ego’s mechanism for trying to ensure my security in the face of there really being no security. The hope of security is that I can take whatever I believe to be secure for granted: For example, “I own my home, I have $10,000 in the bank, I know that my religion is the true faith, my country is always right,” and so on.

Are any of these attachments guaranteed to be true and lasting? Of course, they cannot.

I have now come to understand an attachment as something that I believe I cannot possibly give up. I am so associated with it that it is a part of me. It is as if my energetic body embraced something that is not really me. In doing so, I surrendered to the attachment and gave up a part of myself. What is the price of my attachment? In all choices, there are always associated consequences. “The game of choice and consequences,” is one way used to describe the mechanism of choice. When I chose to become attached, the consequences were a limitation on my personal power and the potential to experience much pain should I be faced with the loss of my attachment.

Detachment does not mean to not love, care, or have affection for someone, something, idea, or principal. Detachment can embrace all of these and more. Detachment is giving freedom to myself and to those things that I care for and love. Attachment is to grip them so fiercely that I limit my life and growth so that I can hold on to them. “Holding on” limits the potential of my attachments and me.

Detachment and non-material are not the same. I can have material things in my life and not be attached to them. I can be attached to the most trivial and most sacred. The “value” of the attachment is immaterial, so to speak. It is the meaning that the attachment has that is the conduit into my personal power that drains off my energy and freedom to act. Here is the key: I can choose the meaning that something has for me. If I choose a meaning for something that says that I cannot live without it, I have thus created that I cannot live without it, and am attached. My life, with respect to the attachment, becomes all about protecting and holding on to the attachment to guarantee something that cannot be guaranteed.

For example, let’s say that I have a hat that I wore when I climbed Katmandu (which I have not – remember this is make believe for illustration), and am really attached to the hat because of the experiences we “shared.” I wear this hat everywhere I go. It is underneath my pillow at night. I even wear it inside around my home. My attachment is huge. One evening I go to a restaurant and reluctantly check my hat along with my coat. When I leave, my hat is nowhere to be found. It is gone. I insist the checkroom, the kitchen, the dining area be searched but to no avail. My hat has disappeared.

Panicked and ill, I go home but cannot sleep. There is a card inside the hat that has my name and phone number; perhaps someone accidentally took my hat and when he discovers it is mine, will call and I can bring it home. A sleepless night greets the dawn with despair and depression. Weeks go by. I place ads in the paper, attach pictures of my lost hat to buildings and poles offering a reward, and I appear on local talk shows begging for the return of my hat. The police are not helpful, and the FBI refuses to issue an all points bulletin about the now obvious kidnapping of my hat. I turn to drink, soon lose my job, car, and home, and am homelessly wandering neighborhoods looking for my hat… all because of my attachment to it… facetious in content but not context. Get the picture?

The more attachments I have, the less freedom and personal power I have. How then can I detach from attachments? If attachments are about security, how can I gain security by detachment?

I honestly think about how I would feel if I lost something to which I am attached. Whatever the emotions, however devastating they may be, I experience as best as I can the depth of the loss. When I am there, I detach from the object, person, or idea by thanking it for its service to me and then with love of myself and the attachment, I release my hold on it. I accept what life would be like without it; I change the meaning to me of whatever I was attached to. I understand that even in the shadow of its loss, I am still me and beloved of spirit. The rest of my life spreads before me. Security comes from having no attachments. When I understood this, I realized that I had discovered one of the major components of happiness.

Does this mean I have to give up what I am attached to? Maybe I do (as in a death) and maybe I don’t. In the example of the lost hat, when I thanked the hat for its service and released it to wherever it went next, I changed the meaning of the hat from an indispensable possession to that of a long term “friend” who moved on. I was free to buy a new hat or simply have the memory of the old one.

In most instances of detachment, I found that I did not have to give up anything but the “meaning” of the attachment. I simply gave it a new meaning. The new meaning still contains the joy and pleasure of the old attachment but with the realization that if it exits my life, I can live without it, and even open myself to something better. This is the freedom of being while allowing access to personal power. I have freedom for I am not weighed down by the worry of losing my attachments. I access personal power by being open to new ideas, experiences, and material goods.

The “why” of this lies in understanding energy. Each of us only has so much energy that we can store. Since everything is energy, I can store only a very small amount of whatever is available to me. When my storage is tapped out and there is no room left, I cannot bring anything new into my life. Attachments can use up a lot of storage. When I detach anything, then storage opens up so I can bring something new into my life. There is an adage to the effect that to have something new in life, I must release something old. Not detaching blocks my ability to bring something or someone new into my life.

A common example that so many of us experience is the loss of a relationship.

I have had more than one relationship that I clung to after it ended, so I am really familiar with “relationship” attachments. Here is but one… A few years ago, I became absolutely smitten with a woman who is intelligent, beautiful, and with whom I had a lot in common. We began dating, and from the first date, I attached myself to her like a leech. I also became absolutely fearful that she would drop me like a soggy, paper towel. For three years, I constantly attempted to be and do whatever I thought she wanted so that she would stay with me. Although, I knew she really enjoyed being with me, I also knew in my heart that she did not feel about me as I did her. Nevertheless, I hung on and hung on until she left me for another man whom she ultimately married.

Lesson over, right? No… for the better part of a year, I simply would not detach myself from her. Even though I dated several, really wonderful women I simply could not begin to create a new relationship - no way. Although she was completely out of my life, I remained attached to my “meaning” of her and there was no room for someone new in my life. I now recognize that one can go on remaining attached to someone who is absent from their life for years… perhaps even for the rest of their life. During the time that I stayed attached, I lost out on many potential opportunities for new relationships. It’s so easy to simply become lonely and bitter - all because I chose not to detach from a relationship that was never meant to “be.”

Finally, without consciously knowing how I did it, I was able to detach myself from her, and we remain friends to this day. Within a few short weeks of detaching from her, I was able to enter into a new relationship. How did it happen, this detachment? I now understand that it was because I was able to redefine my meaning of our relationship.

Seemingly overnight, I shifted from “rejected lover” to “friend”. I believe that my inner guidance knew from the beginning that we would not be together long, so, had I been detached from the start, I could have simply enjoyed her company and all the great experiences we had without giving up any of the love and wonder of our relationship.

Now I am learning how to detach, and it is a wonderful gift.

A new year is before us heralding new beginnings; now is a great time to think about attachments and consider detaching from them. Is it a bit scary? Yes, but I find the rewards are well worth the risk.

May you discern with compassion…

Ron McCray
Associate Editor