Non Attachment

I have been moving the last three days, and should be completely finished tomorrow. However, I will not have internet service in my new place until Thursday.

In the meantime, I thought I would talk about attachment and non attachment and what it really means. To make a long story short, primarily, it means just this, as Bill Harris of Centerpointe Research would say, "Let anything that happens be okay." When something happens early in life that seriously hurts us, we often build an attachment to that particular occurrence thinking that it is what is typically our fate, and we begin to draw that experience to us more and more. We build up a pressure point around that type of occurrence in the sense that we feel it is something that naturally happens to us. When we build up an attachment, though unwittingly, to a particular negative occurrence, we are regularly drawn to that same type of experience, though we do not consciously recognize it. The key to releasing it is to let go of the attachment to it. In other words, when it happens the next time, we draw no conclusions about the goodness or badness of the situation, but simply let it go, unconcerned. If it relates to a constant rejection for example, we let it be okay. We do not emotionally involve ourselves in the outcome. It is perfectly okay. In regards to non attachment, I recommend a book called "Oneness." The author's name skips me at the moment, and the book is at my new place, but I will get it. One thing in that book that I think is very pertinent is a statement in chapter eighteen regarding emotions. Men often feel that emotions should be controlled, women often feel they should be expressed, but as this book brings out, the emotion should be "transcended." In other words, it should be felt, but moved beyond, in a sort of total acceptance. It is not necessary to yell and scream in order to release emotions, or express them in any undignified manner, but it is also wise to not just hold them in. The key is to transcend, and we do that once again, by releasing our attachment to the outcome or to the trauma experienced. We go beyond. We feel it, but it still okay, absolutely okay.

Hexagram one and two have many, many different meanings. In and of themselves, there are no positive or negative attachments to either yin or yang, except in the way they relate to each other. There is true yang and false yang, and there is also true yin and false yin. However, in some respects yin is evil in relationship to yang, and yang is evil in relationship to yin. Do not get caught up in thinking yang is this and yin is that. Yang is only yang in relationship to something else, and yin is only yin in relationship to something else. Of themselves they have no constituency. The do not exist except in relationship to something. Of themselves they have no quality. So in one respect, neither yin nor yang is good or bad, in other respects, one is good and one is bad in relationship to each other. So one of the things that is going on in hexagram one and two is that yang is light and yin is dark. That in itself has no connotation of good or evil, except in certain relationships with one another. So don't think I am saying yang is good and yin is bad or vice versa. It is only in this context that they take on these meanings, in that in one respect yang refers to that part of us that is in the open and can easily be seen, yin is that darkness within us, and relates to the dark side of us that does not want to be seen. That dark side of us often sabotages us and works against us. It is our dark side that causes us to slip up. Now before we get into the rightness or wrongness of this remember that this is just the way it works, it does not necessarily have the intention of evil, but when we do evil, it is often that part of us that unconsciously leaves a blueprint of our actions so that we later "pay for our crimes." It can be considered evil, but it can also be considered that part of us that wants to balance out the equation, (remember the movie the Matrix? Mr Smith was the dark side of Neal, and one cannot exist without the other) and will create our karma as necessary, but our karma is also our salvation. It is a dual edged sword, and cannot be considered good nor evil except as our perception of it reports it. It is just there, and must be brought to the light so that we can understand and know ourselves. In Eric Van Lustbader's book "The Ninja," the master says, "In order to be a true champion we must explore the darkside as well." Without that we do not know ourselves, and do not know why we keep attracting the same negative situations and sorrows to ourselves. But we will learn if we allow the outcome to be what it may with no attachment, allowing everything that happens to be okay. And it is okay.