Freedom in Not Being Attached

The roots of attachment run deep, and it's all about survival. As young ones, we need to attach to the people around us to get our needs met. Then we get attached to love, success, attention from others, material objects, security. We're held hostage by these needs.

Being attached is bound to cause suffering. Because no matter how hard we try, all forms are created with an expiration date. All forms are temporary, and they will go. And to state the obvious, no one has made it out of here alive.

We start by being attached to survival, to those who make our survival possible, and it continues from there. We experience a great comfort with the known and the familiar and begin to fear letting go into what we cannot know or control.

Investigating our attachments opens the path to a life that is authentic and real. If we bring our fears out of the shadows with a willingness to befriend them, if we contemplate the dissolution of everything we know, the heart can't help but sing a song of gratitude. Everything could go, but reality remains – this moment – fresh, alive, and overflowing.

-Gail Brenner