Resolving the Conflict Between Love & Attachment

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” ― Rumi

In our modern approach to the human necessity of relationship we often try to draw a hard line. We insist that love and attachment are opposites and you have to let go of one in order to experience the other.

Ah, life is not so simple.

Attachment is a term that seems to have nothing but negative connotations. Perhaps we should use this word instead... BONDING.

The positive side of what we call attachment is bonding. If a child does not bond with its mother it will struggle with emotional difficulties its entire life. Attempting to compensate for the absence of this essential human need results in all of the psychological distortions and even physical ailments we experience throughout life. It will also means that future relationships will be filled with the attachments in the sense we now commonly use it.

So the real issue we must look at is not attachment, but a lack of genuine bonding.

There is an enormous gift that comes with being a human being. It is a gift that, as far as we know, no other critter on the planet possesses. It is the capacity for introspection and compassionate discrimination.

Unlike our non-human brothers and sisters, we can recognize conditioning and conditioning. In this recognition we can bring to ourselves the quality of love, self-acceptance and appreciation that was lacking in those formative years. In other words, we can create an inner environment where a miracle takes place. We SELF BOND.

This bonding is not one thing bonding to another. It is the bonding with our Original Innocence.

You see, the process of healthy bonding with parents is actually creating the inner environment where we are comfortable in our own skin. We feel a sense of completeness, of resourcefulness. The loving acceptance of parents creates a loving acceptance of ourselves. This is the natural bonding that, in adulthood, expresses itself in the healthy bonding in relationships and minimizes, even eliminates the potential for unhealthy attachments, that is relationships with strings attached.

If a relationship, of any kind, is an attempt to compensate for something very essential missing from you, it will inevitably have strings attached. It can't help it. The need we have to this bonding with ourselves is to critical it simply must be either fulfilled or compensated for.

When this inner environment of self-acceptance is present there is no need for the nervous system to create the layers of self-protection that make up our self-defeating conditioning.

Instead, there is more direct access to your true nature. That means you really do know what you need and want. Then, inevitably, you will be finding experiences and relationships that express your wholeness, instead of finding experiences to try to compensate for its absence. You will be bonding and not attaching. There will be no strings.

The good news is that this Original Innocence is always present. Because it is what you are It can never be destroyed. it can only be obscured by the nervous system's primary mandate to keep you alive. And everything I teach is a path back to that Innocence, sometimes through some difficult inner spaces, but always arriving at the place where this is nothing but light and love.

Then even the word bonding falls away, since there is no need to bond with what you already are. Bonding dissolves into Oneness and in that Oneness there are no strings, no attachments. There is only Love.

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