There’s confusion about attachment

Four years ago a client and later dear friend of many years was dying. I made house calls for her near the end of her life. Our time was spent sitting on her bed, surrounded by her beloved animal friends.

(It was October and I can still see the delicate leaves of the Japanese Maple on her balcony aflame with the colors of autumn. My mother loved those trees and its presence evoked her death 14 years earlier.)

My friend spoke through her broken heart about her children, her animals, her partner. While she spoke about her loves she was making herself wrong about being “attached” to this life because she believed being “attached” was unspiritual. She was someone who had suffered significant traumas so a wish to transcend pain through spirituality was a go-to for her.

As I said, there’s confusion about “attachment”. We like to say how “unattached” we are as if it’s some kind of spiritual achievement. Being attached to wishing to appear “spiritual” is a trap in and of itself. When we push away any aspect of ourself we invite confusion.

Rejection of reality is where the most suffering and confusion happens.

We are wounded in our closest relationships. Healthy attachment is a biological necessity and we are all hungry for connection.

In believing we are “unattached” we are protecting ourselves from the pain of loss, disappointment, etc. If we could just spiritually transcend our human need for connection, we’d be free of attachments: or so we think.

Our path to greater awareness and healthy connection is the one right under our feet, right here, right now. All elements necessary for our waking up are right here in the divorce, the diagnosis, the family dynamics, the pregnancy, the marriage, the job loss.

And that’s the same for our collective troubles: in the social injustices, the inequities, the racism, the homophobia, the sexism.

Our necessary social healing will arise from the turbulence of the upheaval and those in the collective healed enough to turn toward it.

Giving ourselves space to respect our attachments and acknowledge the sacredness of the ordinary is to meet ourselves kindly. To look upon our humanity with mercy rather than imagined perfection, is the way home to our hearts which is what we want and what this world needs.