(Un)Attachment

In May, my post entitled "Paying Homage" explored the aspect of attachment that struggled with a perceived loss, a forgetting, when letting go. I concluded that letting go meant taking in more deeply.

This week brought a stretching in my working understanding of unattachment. I have been struggling to let go of a primary relationship (one year deep) and have held with care another friendship, dear to me, that seemed potentially threatened. In both, I have mourned the possibility of total loss... what would that mean?

I learned much from the latter this week that influenced my place in the first. While actively mourning the tenuous nature of mortality (we might all be on the brink of illness, death, or accident and not know it; our sense of security is a false reassurance, though comfortable), I came to view my work in unattachment differently.

A friend told me that she would like to open herself to enlightenment, whatever earthly experience such a growing required. Good or bad, it's pointless to label, but essential openness to becoming consciously realized souls... this was the work. Have I asked for soul realization so clearly? No. I have been afraid to ask for full disclosure because the "price" might be too high for me to bear. Too high? Such as? The death of a child. A loved one. My own incapacitation. On a smaller scale (all my human measurings), the loss of my home, my garden, my value as a teacher/mentor. And more.

I took a breath. Why am I afraid to "lose" these elements in my life? The pain, I imagined, unbearable. Yes, and why? Because the pain is connected to my identities in this plane. The mother. The lover. The teacher. The gardener. Beauty. All the exquisitely defined perceptions of my soul that this ego is so eager to grasp at. And all, in the words of Eckhart Tolle, "are not [me]."

Oh. They're not, are they? I am smiling now. For I am something undefined in this world. Something colorful and infinite in size and shape, my spirit forever unfolding into what I had not yet imagined. What is me? I am in awe to witness.

"Me" is without edges. I am a hue of the All, vibrating with a resonance that sends me spirit-bound into everything I see and touch, feel and know. There is no role or identity in this "Me" that is in any way real.

And now I know it and feel it. I can walk it. My attachment to you is no less than my attachment to me. For that piece of me that seeks some hide-bound connection with what I have cared for is most drawn to the exquisite and finite beauty of what should be, could be, might have been. It knows the symphony of sorrow, the tragedy of love unrequited, a match that nearly struck a fire to light heaven itself.

Nearly. The word speaks to a framework of limitations. The tip-off. Our worldly dramas that catch at my heart-strings, play scenes in my mind, are all drawing hard on me in my roles. As a gardener, a mother, a writer, or a friend it doesn't make sense that the primary relationship I have worked so hard at could have failed. The notion of failure itself, heart-wrenching.

But if I am not these roles at all, if I am only my essence, unattached to my garden (gasp), my children (deep, deep breath), my home (exhale)... then what? What does separation in a primary relationship mean to me? No more than a bird's first flight. Letting go to trust in an instinct deeper than my own, patterns that will support me beyond reason, love that carries wing to wind.

It took me a good few minutes to make that kind of commitment to myself, to let go of my roles and identities and experience what it is I am more fully. Interestingly, I noticed that the same cornerstones I experience in the NVC definition of empathy are my guides to finding "me" in this moment: full focus, genuine curiosity, and the sole intention of (self)connection. I have the tools. Only the willingness to trust and to fly were in question.

All day, I have checked in. Is it me? Is my response to this conflict me? The color combination I chose to wear to the party? The biceps my friends are commenting on? The competence Seda celebrates in me for this achievement or that? My worries about the kids' abilities to navigate socially? No. Not a one. I have been smiling so hard all day that my face hurts.

Unattachment is a taking in. But the work, once integrated, cannot be labeled or categorized in any way. No sentimental token survives the fires that forge these changes. And the rest -- memories of earthly words and deeds that appeared beautiful in their joy or pain -- I am now willing to "lose" or "forget" as the wind blows. I was terrified to let these go before; they were exquisite in their own desperately human sense, so full of meaning. Now, I see that this beauty held me because it appealed to the beauty I found in my own identity.

I am open to being ugly now. Open to forgetting what happened yesterday and forgetting my worries for tomorrow. I am me in my heart either way. The world will or will not understand me. That won't change who I am for a moment. And that is my new affair: I am discovering what it is to be me (at one with all).

You might prepare to be surprised.