My Story of Attachments

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 factor to obtaining 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 the 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. 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.

What Are We Dragging Around?

The new human will cut the ropes from the things that we drag around. Our minds will be quiet. We will have inner peace, free from worrying about all the things that tie us down now. With the shift to Christ consciousness we will be free to experience life in the moment without living our experiences in the past or future. To explain this concept, first there needs to be a definition of what attachments are and how they play a role in inhibiting us from the freedom that will be an attribute of humans on the new earth.

There are so many aspects to the description of what attachments are and how they affect us in duality consciousness that it may take more than one article to do it. Some of the examples of attachment will be controversial and tread on some deep seated beliefs. but as I have previously stated, the new consciousness will be a complete overhaul of our perspective and how we interact with each other. We attach our selves to things, to jobs, to spouses, to our children, to expectations and outcomes.

I will start with the most obvious example of attachment first and possibly the most talked about aspect of our society. The attachment to things.

In present day society the attachment to things is a huge factor in how we live our lives. We love to accumulate stuff. We protect our stuff. We worry about whether our stuff is OK and whether someone will take our stuff. We spend a third of our lives working to have the money to buy stuff. Countless hours are spent looking for stuff to buy. Our happiness sometimes hinges on whether we can buy more stuff. Our home, our cars, our things become a part of us. They are attached to us.

We take them with us wherever we go either by literally taking them or by thinking about them when we are away from them. A huge amount of our lives is spent on obtaining, thinking about, worrying and taking care of our stuff. We seem to love to amass it, store it and have to get a large truck to move it. What does our stuff do for us?

Does it make any real difference in our lives? Does it bring us happiness? Does it give us status in society? Does it make others love us more? Does it merit the importance we seem to give it?

Does it ties us down? Is it hard to leave our stuff from fear of something happening to it? Our stuff is attached to us. It can almost rule our lives if we allow it.

This practice of looking outside ourselves for things to bring us happiness has grown into an albatross that just hangs around our necks making us do many things that we probably wouldn't do if we didn't have the intense desire for accumulating stuff. What would our lives be like if we didn't have this stuff? What would we think about? What would we buy with the money from our hour intensive jobs?

I like to look at poor cultures in our world that don't have the access and ability to buy the stuff that we have in our so-called modern society. Are these people happy without a lot of stuff? They sure seem happy to me.

Jobs

To gives us the ability to buy stuff we need jobs. We need to earn an ever increasing amount of money to be able to keep buying and storing this stuff. These jobs become so important that we get attached to them. We carry them around with us also. They define who we are. They define our status. We worry about losing them just like we do with our stuff. They also occupy a huge chunk of our thoughts and time in our days.

The next question that is usually asked after meeting someone after name is "what do you do?" They are attached to us like a badge that tells all who we are. They can also take over as the highest priority in our lives. Is what job we have really who we are? Is what we do more important than who we are.

This attachment to a job is merely the outcome of the importance we place on things in our daily lives. To obtain things we need to have money. To get money we need jobs. When we realize that things aren't important then our priorities and perspectives regarding jobs will shift along with them. This attachment to our job occupies a huge part of our psyche so to change our perspective on the accumulating of stuff will have a huge affect on our attachment to our jobs.

Now the controversial examples of attachment. The attachment to people.

Spouses

Many words and cliches are used to describe our relationships to our spouses. We enter into wedlock. We tie the knot. Our better half. Marriage. The union of two people. These words all denote an attaching of two people together. The prevalent belief is that we are not whole without the joining with another. This concept is deeply rooted in duality consciousness where there is two separate opposite things. Male-female, good-bad, right-wrong. With this belief we look to join with another to attain this feeling of wholeness.

With that union there comes the feeling of ownership of the other. My wife or my husband. They are expectations of how the other should act. It can create feelings of possessiveness and jealousy. It can cause thoughts of fear of losing them or feelings of inadequacy or standards that are not lived up to. A myriad of negative emotions can result when we attach to another person.

The same things as my description of attachment to things can also apply with people. This example of attachment may be hard to understand but all attachment is the same. Attaching or trying to own another can cause disagreements as to which way each one chooses to go. If the other person doesn't live up to your expectations of how you think things should be then arguments often follow.

The result can be a separation from each other both figuratively and literally. Freeing each other, untying the knot that comes from this form of attachment. Seems the most successful relationships between two people is when they both recognize that they are whole unto themselves.

With the next step in human evolution, we know that we are god. That we are whole. That we have all we would ever need inside our selves. That we do not need anything or anyone outside of our selves to feel complete. That each person is an entity unto his or her own. Enjoying the time together but allowing each other to grow and experience things of their choosing. Accepting each other's choices in all things knowing that being and feeling free to follow one's desires is paramount to inner peace and contentment.

There are more examples of attachment that I will have to extend to another article for this topic. As I have said, this subject is long and possibly painful to examine. It touches areas of our beliefs that some may label as unthinkable for us to ever change to. The next article will discuss the attachment that we have to our children and how this attachment causes us endless grief and worry and prevents us from being truly free. To experience the freedom that we will have with the attributes of the human being on the new planet earth.