No Attachment! No Depression!
Attachment is no more than a safety blanket to overcome fear—fear of change
and of the unknown from that change. To cope with that fear, all attachments
become distractions.
We are living in a world with many problems that confront us in our
everyday life, and many of these are not only unavoidable but also insoluble.
To overcome these daily challenges, many of us just turn to attachment as a
means of distracting ourselves from facing our problems head on, or adapting
and changing ourselves in an ever-changing environment. All of our struggles in
life, from anxiety to frustrations, from anger to sadness, from grief to
worry—they all stem from the same thing: our attachment to how we
want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting and embracing whatever
that might happen after we have put forth our best effort.
Attachment is the source of human depression. No attachment, no depression!
Career attachments
Your career may span over decades, involving many ups and downs, such as
promotion and unemployment, changes of career and pursuits of higher
qualifications, among others. They may have become your problematic
attachments.
Money and wealth attachments
Money plays a major role in life. You need money for almost everything in
life. Attachment to money and the riches of the material world is often a
result of an inflated ego-self. You may want to keep up with the
Joneses—driving a more expensive car than your neighbors and friends.
Relationship attachments
Living has to do with people, involving agreements and disagreements, often
resulting in mixed emotional feelings of joy and sorrow, contentment and
regret, among others, and they become attachments to the ego-self as memories
that you may refuse to let go of—forgetting and forgiving, for example, are
hurdles often difficult to overcome.
Success and failure attachments
Success in life often becomes an attachment in the form of expectation that
it will continue, bringing more success. Failure, on the other hand, may generate
disappointment and regret—an emotional attachment often difficult to let go
of.
Adversity and prosperity attachments
In the course of human life, loss and bereavement are as inevitable as
death. Loss can be physical, material, and even spiritual, such as loss of hope
and purpose. You may want to attach to the good old days, and refuse to let go
of the current adversity. Adversity and prosperity attachments stem from the
ego-self.
Time attachments
Time is a leveler of mankind: we all have only 24 hours a day, no more and
no less, although the lifespan of each individual varies. Attachment to time is
the reluctance to let go of time passing away, as well as the vain attempt to
fully utilize every moment of time, leading to a compulsive mind, such as
texting while driving.
Sometimes we are so busy in the outside world that we seldom have an
opportunity to look inside of ourselves, to understand who we really are and
what really makes us happy—probably not the material things around us.
Letting go of your attachments is the art of living well.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
No comments:
Post a Comment