The Difference between Attachment and Limitation helps you shift attention to your inner need rather than external demand.
articipant:
So I’m not sure exactly how to ask my question. I’ll probably use personal context. We’re in a kind of a year where a lot of people, myself included, are being asked to let go of stuff.
And this includes physical belongings and things like that. And I’m trying to maybe understand more of the process of this because in theory, if we’re not attached to our objects, we should be able to have anything and everything we want, but we do have that attachment. And I know for a fact that letting certain things go releases energy.
I’ve sold certain things that have gotten money flowing again, or I’ve gotten awareness of growth and stuff like that. But sometimes I have to let things go that I’m not really completely comfortable letting go. And I’m not really sure if it’s a good attachment, I really don’t need to let this go, or is it something that needs to be let go of?
You know what I’m saying? It’s do I need to let this thing go? Sometimes it seems almost like sacrifice. We know, we’ve all heard stories of people that lose their home in a storm, and they lose everything they own, and it leads to some huge conscious evolution and whatever.
But it seems like sometimes I’m letting things go, and I’m not sure I really want to let go. I wrestle with it. I let it go, but the problem is it feels like I’m sacrificing, it comes down to why do I have to let certain things go?
Why can’t I keep certain things and let other things go? And then I’m questioning my attachment to these things. Like, why am I really attached to it? Do I really love this object or is it just something from my childhood? It’s hard to put this into context.
Cheryl:
I get it. Or more importantly, they get it. So, the way they want to answer is to say that what they would like to do is instead of using the word attachment, they’d like to use the word limitation.
Part of that is because there is a certain amount of, let’s say, spiritual baggage attached to the word attachment.
They’re not saying this is necessarily true for you, but they’re saying that there is this idea about how attachments are not good things, and that if you let go of what you’re attached to, you become, let’s say, more spiritually evolved.
And they would like to strongly express a contrary opinion to that idea.
Because, yes, you can get attached to things and it ends up not being healthy for you for a variety of different reasons, and there is a benefit to letting go.
But, when you perceive the letting go process to have a particular intended result, that is where you get into trouble, because the idea then of attachments often comes with a specified cause and effect.
If you let go of these things, you’ll free yourself. Sometimes that happens, but sometimes it doesn’t.
And in the case when it doesn’t, it’s mainly because the problem wasn’t like you thought it was.
For example, if you’ve let the picture you drew in first grade hang on a wall, 50 years on you’re thinking maybe you could let go of that.
But this is why limitation is so interesting as a word is because it’s not so much the thing, it’s the experience of the thing that is where the limitation is, right?
Sometimes the limitation comes because you think if you do A, you will get B, right?
And it’s not that that’s untrue, but if you hold it in such a way that the only possibilities are that A produces B, you’re living within a limitation, right?
Because a lot of times when you do A, you could get Z.
Or you could get Y, or you could get Q, and by thinking it’s only A that gets you B means you’re living within a limitation, and they think that the underlying conversation here is about how to not live with limitation.
So sometimes there’s things that you may be attached to that are a result of a limitation. It’s not so much getting rid of stuff, it’s getting rid of the habit of limitation.
And to a certain extent, it’s also getting rid of the idea that there’s good things and bad things, because partly the problem with the idea of attachment is the feeling that there’s some things that are good and some things that are bad.
The word I like here is the institutionalization of a good idea.
It’s like how we get stuck on it, because we create a limitation.
If the only way to prove that we are spiritually adept is to be able to meditate every day for a couple of hours, we’ve actually created a limitation for ourselves.
As opposed to, you might get to some sense of spiritual connection that wasn’t there before because of the meditation, but you don’t have to have that very strict cause and effect situation.
In fact, that’s exactly what I was writing about this morning, which is we often get to a place in our lives and we think there’s only one or two possibilities because we can’t see past the limitation.
And in that case, the limitation is not being open to what’s not known, right? And that’s often what creates attachments because that’s how we deal with the unknown.
If we say that the only way that we can get to where we want to go is by having the perfect meditation pillow and the perfect incense to burn while we’re meditating so that we can get into that heightened state, we’re creating a whole lot of limitation in that process.
So, the question then, in the letting go of your stuff idea is to ask the question, essentially, is this limiting me in some way?
And you may get an answer. You may not.
You may get an answer today. Because it happens that quickly.
It’s something that once you step into that place, you’re in a certain sense, you’re in flux the entire time.
But then it’s also about where are you trying to get to, right? If you’re trying to get to a place where you don’t feel like you have so much hanging on you, then letting go of stuff’s a great thing to do.
Personally, I’ve gone through three or four periods in the last six years of dumping stuff, getting rid of stuff.
Like three and a half years ago when I moved here from Oregon, I let go of 90 percent of my books. And when I first thought of that, I was in absolute tears.
Oh no, I can’t, and then I thought, Cheryl, 90 percent of these books you have not touched in two years since you moved them from the last place that you hadn’t touched them for two years.
They can go, right? And if I get someplace in my life, and I think, oh, my God, I really wished I hadn’t gotten rid of that book, I’ll just buy myself another copy. I
f it’s that important that it’s physically present in my life, then I will give myself permission to bring it back in.
But there’s things that I know some people look at me and it’s like, why are you still holding on to that, Cheryl?
It’s because I know it’s not time to let it go.
And because it’s not an attachment in a limiting sense. It’s just important to me, and that’s good enough for me, right?
Because then that way, you’re also not stepping into this idea, which is why they really don’t want to use the word attachment, that it becomes a way that you assess yourself, for whether or not you’re good enough, spiritual enough, whatever enough, right?
Which is why for a lot of people, taking on a vow of poverty is much more an act of self-delusion than a true spiritual effort, which sounds weird, but it’s because of the underlying motivation. I’m going to do this so I can prove that I’m spiritual, as opposed to, I feel the need to lighten the burden, so how can I do that?
And sometimes you lighten the burden by literally getting rid of stuff, physical stuff.
And sometimes you lighten the burden by taking the burden off yourself emotionally.
And the other part of it is that we live in a world with plenty of people who absolutely and truly believe that they know what’s best for you, and ultimately, they don’t, because the only person that can know for sure is you.
If you’ve got a 1960 VW Vanagon sitting in your backyard, and you like it there, and it feels good to you, and it doesn’t bother you, don’t worry about getting rid of it.
Just because someone said you must get rid of your attachments.
Because the number one thing that we have in problems with attachments is limitation. That’s the problem.
So address the problem of limitation and not attachment. Does that make sense?
Participant: Yes, you validated several things in there. Like what you said, I noticed how you keep circling around the meditation and the spiritual practices, and that’s always been a sore spot with me too. Validating that isn’t the only way to get there, because most people say, we’ve got to have benefits of meditation, all that good stuff, but it’s not for everybody.
Even people like Eckhart Tolle will say meditation is not for everyone. Substituting the word attachment to limitation makes more sense in context, really having all the stuff I have is brought into question. It’s difficult to move and it has kept me in this place because I don’t want to go through all that again.
But if I shed some of this stuff, it becomes easier. I’m not responsible for so many things and the limitation thing makes a lot more sense than the attachment to it. And I can see even how having things in our lives that we don’t want to get rid of because we don’t want to face the possible pain of missing out, or should we have kept it or something like that is also a limitation.
I hadn’t thought of it like that. Substituting for limitation makes a lot more sense. I can see the limitations much more clearly than I could the attachments. Because with attachments, I question what the attachment is to it. Is it because I don’t want to get rid of it because I’m afraid I’m missing out? Do I really love it? But when you think limitation, it makes sense.
Cheryl:
Part of the idea that they’ve just expressed about limitation is inside out.
Whereas attachment tends, for a lot of people, attachment tends to be outside in.
So it’s shifting you into a place where you’re saying, Okay, I’m going to make the choice for me, and not because someone tells me that’s what the choice is that I should make.
And part of it, too, is just to listen to whenever you say should. If you hear yourself saying, I should do this or I should do that, it’s almost always outside in stuff.
Participant: That makes sense too, because that had occurred to me the other day. I was like, let this thing go. I can always get it back, I could always buy another. And it was like, why not go without it for a little while? What is that old saying? If you love something, you let it go. If it’s meant to be, it comes back around.
But thinking that it’s like a final decision is another limitation. Saying, this is final. I get rid of it. I can’t ever get it back or whatever. That’s another limitation.
The Difference between Attachment and Limitation: This is a question which was asked in the Akashic Records Q&A. For more articles like this, check out Wisdom from the Akashic Records.
