attachment...

I woke up this morning thinking about attachment. Last night before falling asleep, I read a beautiful little story in Autobiography of Yogi about Yogananda’s attachment to a fawn that became sick. Yogananda prayed for the little fawn to stay alive and it did, but that night the fawn came to him in a dream and asked that he be let go, that he was being held back. Yogananda agreed to let him go, awoke and the fawn died soon after.

Yogananda went on to say, “...my deep attachment, which I later realized was selfish, and by my fervent prayers, I had been able to hold it in the limitations of the animal form from which the soul was struggling for release. The soul of the deer made its plea in a dream because, without my loving permission, it either would not or could not go. As soon as I agreed, it departed.

All sorrow left me; I realized anew that God wants His children to love everything as a part of him, and not to feel delusively that death ends all. The ignorant man sees only the insurmountable wall of death, hiding, seemingly forever, his cherished friends. But the man of unattachment, he who loves others as expressions of the Lord, understands that at death the dear ones have only return for a breath space of joy in Him”

I looked up “attachment” in the Oxford American Dictionary and it means “the condition of being attached to something or someone in particular, affection, fondness, or sympathy for someone or something.” Another meaning that pertains was “an affectionate relationship between two people”

The definition seems innocent enough without subterfuge but doesn’t attachment cast a wider web than this? One can be attached to so many things, image, youth, relationship, an idea, etc. Attachment creates struggle and suffering.

For years I’ve been practicing non-attachment. It is not easy. Often when I am struggling I ask what am I attached to? What idea is keeping me stuck? Am I attached to success? A friendship? The past? Most often I find I’m attached to an idea of a person or situation. The universe might be showing me something but I refuse to see it because I’m attached to the idea of what I (ego) think it should be. This especially happens in intimate relationships. I see how I want the other person to be and I hold to it. When I do this, there is no room to breathe. I am strangled by fear and I, in turn, strangle the other person.

It all goes back to my tiny little ego “trying” to hold to something and not allowing.

As Breck says, “suffering is resisting something that is...”

So I ask, what are you attached to? What creates your suffering?