We're continuing something of a series that is, I hope, providing you with some guidelines on how we need to go about living our lives one now at a time. Today we're talking about attachment.
Today is a day for observing. Normally, we take what's going on around us and "make sense" of it by adding our own thoughts, judgements, notions and perceptions. So we never see what's going on - only what we think is going on.
So, today, we're going to practice simply observing - for as long and as much as is humanly possible! I want you to select things that are going on as you day progresses and watch without judging, notice without thinking, observe without prejudice.
Oh - and a reminder. Today we've reached 666 weekly issues, going all the way back to 2008. You can browse the previous 665 in The Archive.
In today's video we talk about how attachment can provide us with the perfect reason to be unhappy - quite the opposite of what we would expect of the things we think we want! But attachment also constrains.
When we think we want something specific - and we become attached to the notion that that is our goal (small, medium or large), we set the boundaries of our expectations. And, as we know from previous conversations, because we can only perceive and achieve according to our expectations, attaching ourselves to a particular outcome or want creates a self-made glass ceiling for us.
Not only does attachment constrain, it blinds. It blinds us to all the opportunities that don't conform to the idea to which we are attached... opportunities some of which are inevitably greater than our own small ideas - small because wew tend, as normal human beings, to attach ourselves to shared notions of what success or happiness should be.
I've said it before, over the last four weeks in particular, and I'll say it again... we need to just let go.
And speaking of just letting go (see today's Reflection, what about the man who was attached to his company car, his reserved parking space and, naturally, his title.
First off, the company decided that all the reserved spaces, prominently displaying their owners' titles, should be put out of sight - so those spaces closest to the main entrance could be reserved for customers.
Then company car policy changed - he'd have to buy his own. And, then, they fired him... and, having lost the title to which he was so attached, he lost all sense of self-worth.
I bumped into the individual in question a few years after the above events... a pale shadow of what he perceived to be his former self.