The Make-Wrongs that Masquerade as Nonattachment
I've been avoiding the nonattachment chapter in the Global Wisdom System Handbook for some time. While meditating on what's stopping me, I was inspired to write the following section. Since it is so different from my normal style, I'm still uncertain about it. I would therefore especially like to request feedback about it. Thank you.
Many people who gravitate towards the practice of nonattachment do so for absolutely the wrong reasons. Perhaps, for instance, you’re pissed off that someone is depending on you, and you’d like to simply dismiss their neediness as an unhealthy attachment. You ask, “Who made me responsible for their problems, anyway? I’m not attached to them, and they shouldn’t be attached to me. There’s something wrong with them that they project such unhealthy expectations onto me.”
When you think this way—and I believe that we’ve all been like this at some point in our lives, it’s probably because at that moment, you’re being a jerk. It has nothing to do with true nonattachment. You’re looking at someone else, someone who is wounded and in need, and you’re making them be wrong for being wounded and having needs. You won’t use these words to describe your actions and thoughts in making them wrong—you’ll talk about their unhealthy expectations and how you need to be true to yourself. Nonetheless, the meaning is the same.
The concept of nonattachment is just one spiritual justification that is available to you to excuse callousness. However, when we take a position like this, what we’re doing has absolutely no connection with the true meaning of nonattachment. We might celebrate the sense of freedom that comes from setting aside our responsibilities, and it might even feel empowering to do so. Nonetheless, instead of being nonattached, we’re just being self-centered, insensitive boors.
If you’re trying to dismiss someone else’s neediness, you’re the one who’s attached, not them. You’re attached to whatever it is in your life that the other person is interfering with. So you’re annoyed. Because of your attachments, you’re incapable of compassion and empathy. All you want is to be left alone to have your own life, by yourself, and you don’t really care about the other person.
And you will walk away, feeling good about yourself and angry at or judgmental about the person in need.
This is only one of many rackets that people run to justify being a scoundrel to one another. For example, you might set yourself up as being mature enough to be nonattached and therefore you put it out that you’re more highly evolved than everyone else. What you’re doing is running a racket on both yourself and other people. Your “nonattachment” is simply a façade that allows you the payoff of being “better” than other people.
All that crap about being more evolved than other people—it’s phony. And I’m not judging you alone for doing this. I know this game. I’m good at writing about how phony this game is because I’m an expert at it. I’m a phony.
You see, I’m well aware that if you claim to be nonattached for the wrong reasons, it’s because you’ve been wounded yourself. So here I am, making you wrong for being wounded and stunted by a constricted life. I’m thinking judgments like “You’re a phony!” or perhaps “You’re playing at nonattachment because you’re cruel!” or “I just think you’re a borderline personality that doesn’t know how to be truly intimate!”
And all the time, I’m giving myself brownie points for being so much better than you—without any consideration of the fact that these nasty attitudes you exhibit are merely symptoms of your wounds. You just haven’t healed from all the damage that’s been done to you in our violent and abusive society.
What a jerk I am! How dare I judge you? Especially since the only reason that I’m annoyed is because of my attachment to: How. You. Should. Be.
By acting annoyed, I’m making myself into the authority, or at least, the guy who’s in the right. I judge you and make you wrong. That means I scored a point. That’s the racket, you see. It’s just a game to make me look good.
I’m totally attached to looking good. Sometimes looking good is even more important than following my heart or my guidance. Way too often, in fact.
In other words, I have entirely failed in being nonattached. Every time I make you wrong, I create a psychic barrier between us. I partition myself from you. I deny the fact that we are all connected through the quantum sea of entanglement that we live in. And this is all because of my attachments.
My attachments are legion. Sometimes I judge you and make you wrong because I’m attached to being right. Sometimes I’ll do things I don’t really choose to do because I’m attached to your approval of me. Sometimes I refuse to do what’s right or otherwise follow what my heart says because I’m attached to the outcome.
In some manner, all of these attachments violate the quantum sea of entanglement in which we live. In some manner, all of these attachments divide us from each other and from our true selves. In spite of the costs, we hang onto our separation and divisions because of the payoffs we’re so attached to. Paradoxically, the real meaning of nonattachment includes being connected with everyone at the deepest levels of experience.
The worst racket is the one that I’m running on myself. I’m putting myself down for having these rackets, because by putting myself down, I prove to myself and to the world that at the core, I’m better than I seem to be when I’m running all these rackets. This is a super-duper racket because it allows me to be in the right, no matter what I say or do.
In short, pretending to be humble about all my rackets is a meta-racket. If I run it, I get three points, rather than just one. Meta-rackets like this are even more addictive than regular rackets, because you score higher points with each meta-racket you run.
So we might as well just face the facts: Most of us will never really be able to achieve nonattachment, and in fact, most of us don’t really want to.
But just in case we change our minds, what can we say about nonattachment. What is it, and what is it good for? What’s it really all about?
Healthy nonattachment is about unhooking yourself from:- Things that prevent you from following your heart and your destiny.
- Social programming that prevents you from experiencing the world of psychic energy throughout every day.
- Obsolete psychic energy cords that hook you to unhealthy past relationships.
- Imagined positive futures that you’ll never see, negative futures that will never come to pass, and neutral futures that inspire no juice.
- Ego attachments and programming that destroy current relationships.
- Unnecessary routines and habits that limit your experience—for instance, by keeping you too busy to meditate or too distracted to be present.
- Role definitions that you inherited from many generations ago, and that restrict your possibilities today.
- Expectations that prevent you from cherishing everything that you experience.
- Attractions and addictions that distract you from your true goals and your true values.
How do you unhook yourself from these attachments without separating yourself from life? How do you set healthy boundaries so that you can have a life without hardening your heart? How do you live your life without rackets and attachments when these wily creatures are going to weasel their way into your best efforts?
At this point, I would normally insert a cross-reference to an exercise or meditation that would help reader to identify their own rackets and begin to rethink them. I will need to either find or write one. If anyone can send me links to such an exercise or meditation, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
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Related Links
I have explored the concept of nonattachment in two other blogs:- My New Year’s Intention is a Resolution of Inner Conflict
- Paradox Is a Door to Deeper Understanding.
- A brief overview of my commitments to the future evolution of the planet through developing the Global Wisdom System Organization,
- A more detailed overview of the Global Wisdom System Handbook, and
- An expansive view of the future society that we're evolving towards.
Participate in manifesting a Global Wisdom Society: First, be inwardly silent for four breaths. Then do a 60-second meditation by viewing my animated invocation of global transformation at the Circles of Light Invocation Web page.
