Candle Moment: Attachment
November 5, 2007
This post is a meme. If you would like to participate please see this post.
Attachment is on my mind alot the last few months. I’ve felt so attached to someone that I love. I want him to be able to spend time with me in my everyday world. I want him to demonstrate his love for me in a certain way. I want him to be a part of my life in a tangible way.
He has not been. It doesn’t really matter if he could or could not. I can’t really know if he could or could not. He has not been. That’s all the reality I can tangibly experience.
Not having him be a tangible part of my life has been so painful to me….except in those moments when I was able to put down the attachments to the love between us being tangible. When I’ve put the attachments down, I just feel the joy in loving him shining in my heart and I feel at peace and free of suffering.
So…I’ve been aware that I needed to put down that attachment and I began to do so by sitting Shiva for him…to stop mentally harping on the loss of him. I mindfully began to remember the good things in our relationship and to appreciate who he is as a person….and to appreciate what he does actually share with me….most of all to appreciate the gifts his presence in my life actively offers me.
It helped me a great deal to shift my perspective off the loss and on to the gifts of the love between us…but it has not released me from the attachments to shift that perspective…only helped me not allow bitterness to overwhelm my life….I was still suffering with grief terribly.
Yesterday, I attended a sweat lodge….I sat in a circle of women and prayed for the hurt and suffering to be taken away. Today I feel better. I just feel at peace….so for the moment I have put the burden of my attachment down.
Another woman was there yesterday who is going through a similar thing with someone she loves. She spoke of love being a source of peace and freedom and that if it does not feel that way, she knows that she’s only grasping that love like a possession….and that she needs to put it down.
Reminds me of how people get over an addiction…and I suppose that in some ways this has felt like an addiction that isn’t getting fed.
But it also reminds me of how a person gets when their needs are not met for long periods of time. They become obsessed with getting them met…Yes?
It feels like a combination of both things for me. Each making the other situation far worse than it otherwise would be. Yesterday I got some deep needs met. I am not grasping now in desperation at anything…so I can put the attachment down.
Its a question of balance. The source of some much needed nourishment has been unavailable for awhile now and yesterday I got a big dose of medicine….and I feel rested now. I wouldn’t say I’m ready to conquer the world now, but I’m feeling better than I have in months. Yay!
It would help me alot to hear from others about how they deal with attachment in their lives….Blessings!
Funny…I just started thinking about “attachment” last night…….
I’ll get back to on this one after a little more thinking.
K….I like to hear your thoughts as you know. *smiles*
Attachment and getting my needs met…this has surely been one of my lessons in the last few years.
I’m not really sure if I have much to offer in the way of wisdom. The only thing that worked for me is understanding that It Is What It Is, and that I am ultimately responsible for getting my owns need met. Learning to speak up about what I needed was huge. How it was received then created yet another response…When it was accepted and embraced and joined - it was a wonderful thing. When it met on deaf ears, it was up to me to decide whether I stay, go, get my needs met another way or through another relationship. I think a real key to the attachment issue is how much we are relying on those around us to make us feel good about ourselves. When we are self contained, we no longer look ‘out there’. This has eliminated alot of attachments for me.
Attachement or rather detachment can be difficult, especially in the matters of the heart. It takes a lot of trust in yourself and the Universe to detach yourself from the outcome. You must live in the now and allow what is to be, to be and trust that all is as it should be for now. You must trust that you have a limited view of the bigger picture and that this person is not in your life as you want for a bigger reason than you can see. Hang in there, continue to be true to yourself and trust that all is and will be as it is supposed to be, even if that does not fit what we desire.
Evening Greenwoman~
Thank you so much for your totally honesty here!
I too have been through similar situations (several times).
Oy!
Letting go of attachments to “physical things” has never been a struggle with me.
However, attachments to love, I struggle profusely.
After I went through the bitterness and anger part, the thing that I realized, was that this “person” was fullfilling my need to feel that I am loved.
(which I know you already realize)
Human love is very tricky. It comes with conditions. Always. Many people will disagree with me, and that’s fine. But what I’ve learned, is that this “human love” is only here to remind me, that no matter how conditional it is, the love that is already within me (within all of us), will NEVER be conditional, because it comes from the Source.
So when I go through times, such as this…I stay very quite and allow myself to be loved!
It’s difficult, my friend, I know. But each time I move through this, it gets easier for the next time. And there will always will be “the next time” as long as I’m living on this planet.
Human love comes and goes.
And I refuse to allow it to validate me.
With this comment, I share with you the love within me!
Be well
Grace, wisdom is often the result of hard experience…and your words are full of wisdom. Thank you. And thank you for your support. *smiles*
Detachment…and trust. Thank you for the affirming thoughts and the helpful words. Bless you Mark. I deeply appreciate you.
Hello Ron! I like to think as you do that love has source within me…and that its a divine source…and therefore as a human, my love is divine. So…I do in a sense disagree with you…but I also see that people are fallible and we can loose sight of the source within us and move through our emotional reality with fear and grief….but we can always seek that source again.
I don’t think that because the source is lost sight of for a time that this makes my love any less divine or that it becomes conditional…only that I am unable to connect fully to it. Its still there as strong as ever….often even growing while I wasn’t looking.
((hugs))
Perhaps the “condition” of human love is that it will…at some point….go away. Certainly “love” is divine….but the human form will leave…be it his/her or our own body that dies.
Can you be neither attached nor detached? That’s the question that has been coming to my mind. The answer has already been proven as yes to me.
He can not leave me. Where would he go?
I can not leave him. Where would I go?
Leaving is only in the imagination. A way our mind tricks us into missing Here so we keep trying to go find It over there. A way of not seeing the Truth.
(Please remind me of this the next time I forget.)
Perhaps this is the point that M has been trying to make with me when it comes to not abandoning me….?
Hon…I don’t think I fully get this point, so it will not rise in me to remind you all that easily…but I’ll try.
*smiles*
Hmm…
It might be even more simple.
You are me and I am you. There is no difference in That which we are.
(Remind me of this too please…if I forget again.)
I think this is the point you are trying to make to yourself…and why you chose to be with M to begin with.
You can not be “abandoned” sweet one. You can only forget Who you are.
(Now don’t go thinking you can get all smart*ss on me just ‘coz I called you “sweet one”.)
*winks and smiles*
Ah….I have an invocation that I work with. Don’t know why I didn’t make this connection before. *sighs…* Sometimes I can be so frickin slow. *rolls eyes*
“I am of you. You are of me. We are One.”
No smart ass…I just smile when you call me that…It was G’s name for me…”sweet, sweetness, little one, sweet one…”
And yes…In a way, I will always be One with M. Always.
((hugs))
*smiles*
…and in all ways.
(just had to throw that in there.)
Do you really think so?
I am having doubts again today…but trying not to give them any attention.
I can feel M thinking of me. He’s feeling sad today anyway because he’s bringing the boat in…but some of that sadness is not getting to share it with me and missing me.
And missing some of the things that he adored sharing with me and can share with no one else.
Sometimes I am sad for him. I know that if I can get over my fear of trusting that I can have the type of relationship I had with him with another person…but he will never know that sort of relationship again if things don’t change to a more open situation in his life if you know what I mean.
I pray that he will not miss that much in the face of what he’s gaining. *smiles*
But I would wish for all ways too. I do wish that very much.