Dear Friends,

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Cheers!

Nothing Is Permanent: Letting Go of Attachment

to People & Materialistic things

“Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It’s the evolution, a never-ending horizon.” ~ Deepak Chopra

I have been reading a lot lately on attachment and impermanence. It’s a big topic, one that is often hard to wrap your head and heart around. How can I live a life without attachment? Doesn’t that mean that I am not being a loving or caring person? I mean really, no attachment—it just seems cold.

This all started for me when the love of my life left me to be in another world. To say I was hurt would be a gross understatement. How could someone who I felt such strong love for just leave me? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. We were together, attached forever.  Wrong.

While I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to, I had to accept.  I fought it for a while, told myself I have to fight it.  It was over, and it was time for me to move forward, but how?  I would like to say that I held my head high and just moved forward with dignity and grace.

I would like to say I had a secret potion to “get over” the love of my life. I wish I could tell you of a magic book I read or twelve steps to follow to heal a broken heart. Those things I cannot offer, but I can offer you hope.

Days after I had an overwhelming urge to walk in nature. All I wanted to do was walk by myself, and that’s exactly what I quietly did. Day after day, rain or shine, I took my little heartache out for a walk until it was exhausted.

I started to hear the sound of the birds, the leaves blowing, and the crackle of the earth under my feet. I started to step outside of my head and heartache, and I started to notice the things around me. It was beautiful, fresh, and amazing.

As my heart started to take in the grace of my surroundings each day on my walks, I felt little pieces of my broken heart start to heal. My self-talk of “why me” drifted away with each step.

I began to stop thinking about my loss of love and started to think about how lucky I was to have experienced love. I opened myself to gratitude rather than attachment and loss.

I had attachment to a person, an ideal, a hope. In many ways I had attached my personal happiness to this person.

In my mind, the love of my life was attached and permanent, to me and for me. As I have now learned nothing in life is permanent. If we can appreciate this reality, we can open ourselves to cherish “now” moments.

Love is not about attachment or permanence. Love is about spending time with another person, sharing moments, experiences, and each other!

Nothing is Permanent: Let Go of Attachment to People and materialistic things.

I mean really, no attachment—it just seems cold.

The moment we make it about “keeping” another for our own gain, our own need, it becomes about our ego, fears, and insecurities. A mindful, compassionate, kind being only wishes happiness and love for others. Sometimes happiness and love for others is moving on and letting go.

It's never just about the item, it's about the emotion the item holds.

Get to the root of why you are hanging on to an item that you know would be in your best interest to get rid of. You may be surprised. What you thought was just an old hairbrush may actually be a reservoir of past emotions that you and your sister shared when she helped you get ready for prom. Or maybe the green gingham shirt with the price tag on it conjures up guilt for buying things that are on sale and never wearing them. Until acknowledged, the shirt will hang in your closet serving only to attract the pattern for more guilt.

And so it's not about detaching from the item, per se.  It's about acknowledging and FEELING THE EMOTION that you have stored away in this item. MAKING PEACE WITH IT in the form of crying, forgiving, remembering, resolving, etc.  AND THEN MOVING ON.

Once you have awareness around an item, you will be amazed at how easy it will be to let go of it. If you have the awareness but still don't want to get rid of the item, then it may simply be too early. See how you feel the next round of decluttering.

Once you realize that life will go on with fewer items, you will not only want to clear out more stuff, but will start to feel free. And when you feel this sense of freedom you know you have mastered the art of detaching from your stuff.

Detachment means letting go and non attachment means simply letting be. “The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree.

They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.  Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.

Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment’.”

Detachment means letting go and non attachment means simply letting be. “The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”

For me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it. It was my letting go that gave me a better hold. The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.

One has to remain detached in order to triumph over others. “A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything”

“Remain in the world, act in the world, do whatsoever is needful, and yet remain transcendental, aloof, detached, a lotus flower in the pond.”

Share and Enjoy!

Parsan Narang

7th August 2016