Imagine the freedom that non-attachment brings.
Non-attachment comes when you realise that there is more to you than what you can see, and there is more to life than what can be seen. When you know what you are, you do not identify with things, and so you do not feel like your sense of self is threatened when something else is threatened. This leads to non-attachment.
Non-Attachment Is Part Of Inner Peace
Non-attachment is a result of knowing what you are, rather than being a practice that will get you to realise what you are. As long as you are identified with your mind, you will be attached to things around you and inside you. It is very difficult to just instantly be detached from reality when you are still controlled by any ego. The nature of attachment comes from the ego. So when the ego is dissolved, attachment naturally disappears.
Attachment can be to anything - people, things, thoughts, emotions or possessions. Anything that you may look for your self in.
Attachment to things is a huge limitation in life. It is part of your mind clinging to something that it identifies with, and usually something it believes will benefit it, make it better or more safe. Once identification with the "thing" is there, the ego does not want to lose it, as this would mean loss of self. This is attachment.
Attachment can also be to thoughts and emotions (even painful ones). These things may give you a sense of self, so unconsciously you do not want to lose them.
Breaking Free
Notice when attachment arises. You may have to be very alert for this, and there may be much resistance and justification for attachment from part of your mind. Just let all of this be. Remain quiet, remain as the watcher from within your inner body, and see what happens.
Do not get pulled in by the mind. If you do, remain as the watcher again, allowing any resistance and arguments of the ego to be. Then they weaken by themselves.
Just noticing attachment means that there is a distinction between you (the observing consciousness) and the attachment. Observing this without judgementmeans you automatically become more and more free from this behaviour. Nothing more needs to be done. Stay quiet, stay present.
Every thing you see is meaningless, it is your mind that gives it all the meaning that you believe it to have - says a Course in Miracles. Every thing you are attached to has a conceptual identity for you, probably backed up with a story from the past or future that justifies remaining attached.
Many things that we experience in life are completely conceptual, completely imagined, yet can seem so real and important when you are trapped in the mind. Step back from your mind and just observe it.
Attachment To The Impermanent Leads To Pain
Things are constantly changing, coming and going, being created and destroyed. That is the nature of all things, so clinging to anything is going against the whole flow of life. That is why there is suffering connected to attachment - it is resistance to life.
When you know that your own consciousness is the source of true happiness and peace, you do not try to replace these feelings with anything else. This automatically leads to a certain amount of non-attachment. In the Bhagavad Gita it is described as if one is sitting apart from what is happening in the world, just quietly observing without judgement.
Do not substitute your sense of self or feeling of wellbeing with some thing that could easily be destroyed. Realise your peace is already part of who you are through present moment awareness. Feel your inner energy field and go deeper into the permanence and stillness of what you really are.
Then you can play in the world of form without getting attached to anything - enjoying what comes but depending on nothing.
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