Are You in Love—or Is It Just an Attachment?

Attachment is a perversion, a gruesome burden, an unholy cocktail of selfishness, jealousy, anxiety and fear which not just corrupts, but corrupts absolutely.

Yet, the human race feeds off the misery of attachment. Attachment to people, places, objects, a country, one’s own face or body, beliefs, habits, opinions, prejudices, even the hope of a better future; these are all the different manifestations of attachment.

Attachment reflects our insecurity, loneliness, confusion, sense of isolation, and search for identity. It is an attempt to give a pleasant experience permanence, even immortality. 

Attachment is a state of delusion because it tries to create meaning and permanence out of imaginary things - a completely wasteful exercise that can never bear any fruit. 

Attachment is much like a spider’s web that you don’t want to be caught in. If you are like a fly that can’t or won’t detach from it, you, too, will slowly atrophy in the web of attachment.

Attachment is an acknowledgement of our failure to love. Justifying attachment as love, which most people unabashedly do, is the most extreme form of corruption known to mankind. And those who do this, short change themselves as well as those around them. 

What is necessary, meaningful and healthy, is change. Anything stagnant rots. Attachment is stagnant. It is about possessiveness, a need for physical and psychological security by clinging to meaningless people, things and ideas. Attachment does not allow growth or progress. A prerequisite to the retention of attachment is that both parties: the person who is attached and the object of their attachment must stay exactly the same. There is simply no room for natural evolution.

The notion of country, religion, race, family, these are all security blankets that lend us a sense of identity, conviction, sense of connection, purpose and belonging. Without these we feel as if we have lost our connection to the world. Yet these ‘attachments’ are responsible for all the conflicts in the world. My country, my God, my worship, my ideas, versus yours!

Independently wealthy people, who do not require a job, will still continue in one, despite the soul-destroying work pressure and its toll on their health, because of the fear that they may not be as relevant without their calling card. This insecurity about losing one’s identity - and the power that comes with it - creates attachment to a job that is wearing you down, even destroying you.

To remain relevant, people keep generating more wealth, more power - like a robot without a power off switch - even though the effort is killing everything that makes them human.

Attachment is also tiring because it is linked to expectation and expectations being misplaced and unrealistic, can never be fulfilled. This gives rise to frustration, anger, depression and a host of other negative emotions. So the more relationships one has, the more tiring it gets, since the multiple unfulfilled expectations on either side casts a heavy burden or resentment that only grows larger with the passage of time.

If you were born with loving parents, you will live with the insecurity of losing them and everything that their existence gives you - a sense of being cared for, physical and financial comforts and so on. This is attachment, because the worry is not for them but yourself. If you felt love, you would cherish every moment with them, knowing that their passing on is a certainty and celebrate their onward journey.

If you are born with parents who are uncaring and selfish, then you will crave love from them and that becomes another attachment. All the things we seek are available in the universe, but our attachment prevents us from noticing or receiving it from another source. We want it ONLY from the person we have attached ourselves to - the person who is incapable of giving us what we so desperately require. If they were capable of fulfilling us, of loving us, of nurturing us, they would have done so already.

In general, if you ask people who have lost a ‘loved’ one what they miss most about them, you will find them unable to recount any of their qualities. What they miss is the work that they used to do for them, the comfort that they used to provide financially or physically by taking care of certain chores and responsibilities, which they now have to do themselves. By no stretch of imagination does this qualify as love. This is the ugly face of attachment, which is selfish and always seeks convenience.

By contrast, love is experienced only in the complete absence of attachment / desire and its byproducts - conflict and misery. Love is freedom. Love is uplifting, energising, unconditional. Love does not seek a return. Love expands, never shrinks. It is not weak, tired or insecure in the way attachment is. Love is a state of being, a life condition. It is steadfast and stable, unlike moods which can swing dangerously either way.

The problem is that since attachment is all that most people know and understand, they cannot detach and upgrade to love overnight. What they can do, is to start observing and analysing their ‘attachments’ and summon the courage to see them for what they really are - selfishness and neediness. If they do this, the web of deceit that attachment weaves, will slowly begin to untangle until you will finally be able to set yourself free. You cannot set others free. They have to do it on their own, by following the same process.

The most powerful energy in the Universe is love and the custodian and source of love is God. Our only purpose in life is to discover love in all its purity and glory - everything else is a waste of time.

The sooner we desperately begin to need and seek love, the sooner we begin our search for the universal cosmic power. Conversely, if we have not begun our journey as seekers and devotees, it is a clear indication that we are content with the half-baked, tired and selfish emotions coming our way from those materially “attached” to us.

Somewhere along this journey towards love, one discovers that love is not something external. It is our own life condition, the source of our power and we really do not require crumbs of love from anybody else.

You may write to Shalini Singh at [email protected] | You can also follow her on Substack: https://shalinisinghscribe.substack.com/

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