"attatchment Is The Cause Of All Suffering"

[Evilwave Heddy]

This thread needs to be moved.

[Prabhaker]

2 hours ago, Tuomas said:

How does one learn detachment after first being positively attached and then swung the pendulum too far and becoming negatively attached to certain things ?

Without ego there is no extreme, it cannot exist; extreme exists as an ego effort. Ego always goes for extremes, chooses extremes. It jumps from one extreme to the other. The ego never stays in the middle. It cannot afford to - because to remain in the middle will be its death.

Meditate, become more sensitive, and take it as a criterion that you will go on becoming more and more detached. If you feel that attachment is growing, then you are erring somewhere in your meditation. These are the criteria. And to me, attachment cannot be destroyed and detachment cannot be practiced. You can only practice meditation – and detachment will follow as a consequence, as a by-product.

So remember that if you feel that through meditation you have become more sensitive, then automatically you will become less attached, more detached. Because you will be more grounded in yourself, you will be more centered in yourself, you will not use somebody else as your center.
What does attachment mean? Attachment means that you are using someone else as your center of being. That means the center of being has been transferred. If you say that you cannot live without this or that, then your soul is not within you. Then you are not existing as an independent unit, your center has moved somewhere else. This movement of the center from yourself to something else, to the other, is attachment. If you are sensitive, you will feel the other, but the other will not become the center of your life.

If you get attached, that is a clear symptom that the sensitivity is not because of awareness. Really, it is not sensitivity at all. It may be sentimentalism: that is a totally different thing. You can be sentimental: you can cry and weep over small things, you can be touched, and a storm can be created very easily within you – but that is sentimentalism, not sensitivity.

[Nahm]

The thing to learn is self sufficiency, self fulfillment, happiness from within. If you're happy with nothing, then you can enjoy anything without 'attachment' emotions. Like a lot of things, it kinda boils down to doing daily meditation, and connecting with our higher whatever-you-like-to-call-it.

[LowPlanetary]

Thank you for all your replies, this has been extremely helpful. If any of you have time i've got one more question.

I'm specifically struggling with letting go of the concept of approval and validation of my ego. Which has created multiple of stresses, anxieties in my life that don't need to exist. I guess there are a few approaches i could go to remedy this.

First is to learn to not resist these emotions and just live with them as there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Which requires me to detach from comfort. How do i do that?

Or i could learn self love to thus make the ego self-sufficient in validation. So i don't have to require other people's validation in order to feel validated as i can provide the approval/love necessary by myself. I'm not too sure how to do that though.

Or i could just become enlightened and realize there is no self to be approved and just live life. And that is a work in progress. 

 

Edited February 26, 2017 by LowPlanetary

[Shin]

You don't need to be enlightened to realize there is no self, just do self-inquiry for some weeks/months.

For everything else, just meditate 2 hours a day for 3 months, and watch your thoughts non-stop without judging them.

This is extremely challenging and emotionally disturbing, and everyone will think you're crazy/a freak, but if you really want to get rid of your approval/judgemental thinking, I don't see any other way.

EDIT: You will still have approval/judgemental thoughts, BUT, you will see them as stupid and silly and won't act on them.

On the very long-term, they'll eventually totally disappear, I don't know I'm not there yet.

 

Edited February 26, 2017 by Shin

[Nahm]

@LowPlanetary Shin nailed it.      Meditation will show you how to sit still shut up and not react. After a month or so, you won't react to those thoughts anymore. 

[Sevi]

On 2/24/2017 at 3:28 PM, LowPlanetary said:

On 2/24/2017 at 3:28 PM, LowPlanetary said:

but, what happens when the game isn't fun and you feel like you're forced to stay inside the game. When a game isn't fun you stop playing it and play another game that will be enjoyable. In life there is only one game to play which is life. So how does this work? 

 

@LowPlanetary

In such case, probably you are asked (let's say by life) and about to improve some necessary skills/awareness which most likely you'll need later; or you are taking part in a bigger picture which somehow you don't know about yet: I'm gonna write 4 stories:

1. Butterfly

A man watches a butterfly coming out of its pod. The little thing struggles a lot for a very long time; after a while the guy can't stand watching it struggle like that and takes a scissors and cuts the pod to help it out, but with those wrinkled very weak wings the butterfly ever flies. 

What this good intentioned innocent guy doesn't understand there, is: That is the universe's way to make the butterflies' those very silky delicate wings strong enough to carry its own body and to be capable to fly. The more struggle the butterflies has, the more flaps its wings, so it becomes stronger and stronger, when it is strong enough to carry the body then it naturally tears and leaves the pod.

2. Diamond

Diamond is a piece of coal which stayed under huge pressure 1 to 3 billion years. And its chemical structure remains exactly the same as coal: carbon4. When this little piece of coal sees himself under such unbearable huge pressure for that long amount of time, while his friends having a very good easy time; he feels very upset, defeated, under unfairness of life, and thinks that God really doesn't like him since not helping him out of that billion years of pressure. Then he comes out as the naturally hardest substance of earth which is impossible to be scratched or crushed by none of the other substances.

3. Bee

This bee at the window of the house tries to fly out through the glass. Then the human takes a newspaper opens the window pushes the bee out, bee flies back, human hits on it, bee flies back, ...on and on... till it flies out. During that struggle bee keeps asking himself: why in the hell, this life hits on my head on and on this harsh? What did I do wrong? Why am I not a beloved creature by this universe?: when you know your life purpose; where to go: universe knows it through you too and generally likes to help?

4. Ant

Two guys go to a mountain to climb. One of them wears contact lenses like 6 degrees something. Accidentally in the middle of the journey he drops one of them: a real big issue for them. While looking around the sun shines on the lens which is carried by an ant. They get so so happy and pick it up. Meanwhile the ant prays to the universe: "why in earth that I am carrying this 'whatever God knows what this weirdo thing is' on me?!! What the heck?! It's not food, it won't serve me, I'm wasting my time... like thank you universe!!!" : in the bigger picture you might be serving something bigger; so if universe brings you somethin to carry, you might not understand the weirdness of it yet but there still can be a reason.

[Nahm]

On 2/26/2017 at 3:50 AM, Bob84 said:

@Tuomas emotion is a good attachment indicator. When you have a emotional response to a thought investigate it.

 @Bob84  YES! Emotions are telling us so much. "So clear but so unheard".