Thought for the Week: Attachment v.s. detachment

In order to have the pure sense of freedom, we must be diligent in refraining from attachments of any kind. That means we avoid strong emotions about a thing. Rather than having to have something go a particular way we take on the attitude that “It’s okay of it happens, and it’s okay if it doesn’t,” We can enjoy a thing, but we don’t need it for our happiness. This is in alignment with the teachings of the Buddha as well as Jesus Christ to “be in the world but not of it.” Detachment, surrender or letting go brings a new found sense of lightness. We can certainly be aware of our feelings and emotions, allowing them to rise and be experienced, and yet not attaching to them. Like the ocean creates wave after wave that come and go, so too we, as the ocean, can experience the emotion of the wave and then let it go. We become anchored in the awareness of observing the experience without being pulled into its energy.

Life can bring us devastating experiences that can rock us to the core. All of us have had these types of life events and it is up to each individual as to how we will respond. Life events are opportunities to grow, expand, experience and develop. The psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, concluded after a lifetime of study that there is an inborn drive in the unconscious toward wholeness, completeness, and the realization of the Self, and that the unconscious will devise the ways and means of bringing this about even if they are traumatic to the conscious mind.

Remember Joseph telling his brothers in Genesis 50:20: “You v meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Emma Curtis Hopkins, the New Thought spiritual teacher was quoted as saying: “This too is God. This too is good. And I demand to see the good in it now.” Let’s remember to be continually open to allowing life events to grow, expand and develop us to higher levels of consciousness. Say with me: “There is a calm assuredness that envelops me as I detach from required expectations and open my heart and mind to the goodness the Divine Presence has in store for me this day.”

—Rev. Gay Beauregard, Alpine Church of Spiritual Living

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