Attachment vs Non-Attachment
Ego-Facade / Personality vs That Which Is Not That
Just some thoughts at the end of the week about the ego-facade…
When you have had the experience of seeing your own ego-facade in its glory, and attachment to your personality no longer determines your every thought and action, the result is that you see the chasm between this way of being and the attached way.
The attached way is the mind-based, personality-focussed, emotion-denying, and incessant activity. The detached way is simply seeing your own mind-based, personality-focussed, emotion-denying, and incessant activity in honesty. By this I mean you do not define yourself by the output of this activity (judgments, assessments, evaluations etc). Even if you find yourself doing it, you quickly see it and let it go.
If you cannot see your own attachments to your own way of being, you will not see your own focus on your own and others’ personalities and intellectual evaluations. Many people, eg in business or company environments, will often use intellectual assessment and cleverness to get ahead of others. It’s that need to know. To know more. To know better than someone else. Ego.
All these anaytical activities are hugely attached activities – attachment to one’s own way of thinking things through. This way of being has its functional uses – eg for a task or project (ie intellectual activity in its purest sense) but when it becomes the way we relate to and approach others, ultimately it is a self-created prison – and one from which one will refuse to even acknowledge the presence of the key that will lead you out of the prison. The key is non-attachment. What is beyond the prison gates? For sure, a place that is scary because it is a question of allowing the unknown to enter, but it is a place of self-acceptance and self-love. Within attachment to mind-based analysis there is little or no room for love, acceptance, humility. And yet it is these that provide true empowerment, freedom and joy. Not knowledge. Not facts. Not definitions of oneself or others. Not opinions. Well, I mean attachment to these, not these per se for in themselves they are neutral – just words really.
It has certainly been my own discovery that compassion and humility do not exist side by side with ego or personality. In fact, it has been my experience that when we speak of eg personality we are not actualy speaking of anything concrete at all. I see the patterns we have, the traits etc as more energy patterns, rather than a fixed ‘personality.’ As one awakens to non-attachment, these energy patterns become more fluid and malleable. The ultimate human way of being is one of non-attachment to the image of yourself you have been trying to project to others (and yourself) so that you would be liked, approved of, loved etc.
It is this very non-attachment that allows a person to apologize to another without undue pride, that allows another to make their own judgments of you without your needing to justify or defend yourself, that gives you a level of freedom from your own self-created mental prison. It also allows for far quicker cleansing of emotional issues than would otherwise be a longer case because you know that emotions – again – are not You.
When there is hidden attachment to one’s own self-created image, energy is heavy, cold and blocked. It’s inauthentic living. When there is non-attachment, or at least honesty about one’s own attachments, interactions are warmer, free-flowing and creative. It’s authentic living.
That’s why it’s so uplifting to be with children who don’t hold on to things and whose minds are much lighter. As adults, we end up having such prisons for our minds that we can be working so much overtime in our heads that it is literally draining for others, since we are all enmeshed in each other’s emotional energies whether we know or like it or not. Not to mention how hard work it is just being ourselves, it takes a lot of energy to maintain the facade.
Lastly, and ironically, such are my attached thoughts about non-attachment 🙂 Human life is a conundrum by design!
Be well and have a great weekend.
BA, H-hp Dip, Dip. Spiritual Counselling
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