Non-attachment

I was listening to a radio program, and a new agey guy was talking. He said he concentrates on doing three things:

1. Mindfulness. (In his words, being present in the moment.)
2. Non-Attachment.
3. Equanimity. (Think both being content no matter what is going on or what your situation or current circumstances; and also a sort of 'all things in moderation.')

Now, he seemed to have 1. and 3. put into some degree of understanding, but his understanding of 2. was, though very common, very off-the-mark.

He said, regarding non-attachment: "I don't own my wife. I don't own things. If something breaks, no big deal." This is not what non-attachment means, not in Buddhist teaching, not in eastern Christian teaching.

Non-attachment is - in my experience in explaining these things to people - the most difficult of the big practices for people to understand. It's also called non-identification. One of the problems is the terms used for the phenomenon have other meaning in most all languages and people stumble over this fact.

Vanity gets in the way as well because something like identification, when it is explained to a person, insults their self-estimate, their self-picture, their sense of themselves being in control, of being awake, etc.

Being in a state of attachment (or identification) is the normal/average state of human beings. It is what keeps us in a state of waking-sleep as we go through our day and life.

It is when the external moving world of things and events and impressions and influences 'capture' you; capture your attention in a 'one way' direction. I.e. capture your consciousness, such as it is. I.e. you are looking at an event on the street, yet you aren't aware of yourself looking at the event on the street. The event has captured your attention in a one-way sense. This can happen with just wallpaper as well. You are always 'identified' with your surroundings. (Your out-of-control imagination and thoughts and memories as well. Identification is also with things internal as well as external.)

I've written this before, even on this blog, but the best illustration I can think of is when you are sitting in a movie theater. If the movie is good it has attracted your attention and you become 'lost' in the moving images and light and sounds coming from the screen. Now, if you were to suddenly come into a state of remembering yourself, and pull back your consciousness, so to speak to where you see the *screen* itself, then you would be aware of yourself looking at the movie. Two-way. Before, it was just one-way and the moving images and light and sound had captured you. (I'm not saying this is a bad thing regarding watching a movie, you actually kind of want to be in that state somewhat or why be in a movie theater, but it provides a good illustration nevertheless.)

In life it's not so good to be in such a state. But you won't be alone. Everybody you see around you is sleep-walking, usually in very strong states of identification.

The other side of the coin of non-identification is self-remembering, or watchfulness, to use a biblical word. (The guy I used at the beginning of this post used the word mindfulness.)

When you are able to come into a state of self-remembering you at the same time come *out of* a state of identification.

Not being in a state of identification (and being in a state of self-remembering) makes you look weird to people, I should say. Imagine you are talking directly to a person and in your mind you are saying: "Here I am, talking to this person, on this campus, with those trees behind her, and I'm in college." People can detect such a state in another person and it generally annoys them. People are less threatening when they are asleep. Our vanity doesn't like it when we are being 'seen'. We will, by the way, always think the person doing it is a moron, even if - in the admittedly rare case - they are not. A rule is you can't recognize when somebody has a higher level of being than you. It's human nature. This is why you have to be very adept when finding on-the-mark teaching. You can't judge the teaching by the person who may be delivering it. (Non-Christians do that with Christians all the time, which is a good way to see why you shouldn't do it.)

Self-remembering has to be learned about by observing its opposite. You have to make a vow to be awake (I am here, in this moment, walking down this street...), and when you inevitably fall back into waking sleep you will, sometime later, eventually remember that you had made a vow to be awake. So now you can see that all that happened in the interval was you being in a state of waking-sleep. Your normal state.

I just wanted to write something on non-attachment and how it doesn't mean "I don't own my wife."

When we are in a state of the *fear of man* we are in a state of identification, by the way. Whether it's reverence or fear. Reverence for humans rather than the Creator or fear of man's collective opinion and so on. That is all fear of man. When you fear God only, in the moment you are practically doing the same as coming out of a state of identification and coming into a state of awakening in the moment.

There are eschatological correlations here. Coming out of fascination and fear of the devil's kingdom and coming, in the moment, now, vertically, into the Kingdom of God.

These two practices of self-remembering and non-identifying require a basic level of internal development. You have to be awake to a basic degree internally. I think regeneration by the Word and the Spirit gives one this (and it should be stated that regeneration is rare; a good thing to go by is if you get angry when someone talks of regeneration you need to humble yourself to the Word and the Spirit because you're not 'there' yet). Also, an unusual culmination of engaging higher influences (art, music, imaginative literature, history, philosophy, science, sacred writings) throughout life and educating the different parts of our being (intellectual, emotional/creative, physical) will give you this. The two practices though are meaningless to most people, at least currently in their lives.

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I should also mention what actually occurs when you do these two practices. You accumulate higher, more refined energy into your inner being (higher than you and your current level of being are used to; to extend limits we have to provoke limits). This energy then is either wasted (through negative emotional behavior or 'heated' intellectual and physical activity), i.e. it usually explodes out of you or is steadily used up in shallow, over-heated mental or physical activity, including out-of-control talking and even laughing; *or* you are actually able to use it. I'll leave that there. Higher energy is cognitive. It brings knowledge, and it brings functions with it that you don't have access to without it. The Puritan was getting at it when he said of faith: Faith hath a piercing eye, to see into the spiritual realms.

The two practices, it must also be said, put you on the spiritual battlefield. This is why a person needs the armor of God when engaging in such practices. It's good to do things to increase your level of being, but it puts you in serious territory. The world, the devil, and your very annoyed inner Old Man notice you and fight you. They confront you. If you don't know about this aspect you will be overwhelmed, as most people are, especially at the beginning of attempting such practices. The whole armor of God and prayer is needed. Everything else that happens you just have to find out for yourself.