A Perspective on Attachment and Practicing Non-Attachment

Old Attachment Perspective.

Even before my spiritual journey began, I heard about “releasing attachment”. Someone I knew long ago told me that I needed to “let go of attachment” to a thing that we were talking about. I didn’t know what that meant, but it kept coming up throughout my awakening journey.

When I was guided to release attachment, I still didn’t know what that meant. How was I supposed to detach from the life and people that I have spent so much time and energy on? I was deep into my own sunk cost fallacy. I did not understand the assignment.

After a while it was no longer a conversation. My spiritual path absorbed my time and energy. I went about my spiritual awakening and didn’t think about who or what I was attached to. What I didn’t realize is that I was letting it all go.

New Attachment Perspective.

During my spiritual awakening I had learned to focus on myself. I learned to move forward no matter who or what tried to get in my way. Even if it was me. I learned to just go with the flow and keep moving forward.

Until one day recently I realized that I have a different relationship with attachment. My ability to focus on myself and my goals, my ability to continue to move forward, and to go with the flow had created detachment.

Attachment wasn’t something that I needed to think through or figure out. Attachment was something that I needed to move through. There was a part of me that needed to let people, places, and things be what they needed to be.

My role in life was to focus on myself and what was important to me. It was to be a little more selfish in a way that was authentic to me and my experience. My selfishness was more about releasing my need to give too much of myself to who and what wasn’t serving me and my life.

People were going to do whatever they wanted. They were going to have their experience, and so was I. By detaching from everyone else’s experience, I was more able to focus on my own. And by doing that, I found detachment without trying.

By focusing on myself and my experience, I naturally detached from the energies, people, places, and things that weren’t aligned with me. My spirit team showed me how to detach, guided me to detach by moving me forward and releasing the old.

For some of us this may seem obvious. We are supposed to live our own life. But I had been an over-giver for most of my life. Which means that focusing on myself was a revolutionary act. And it was a process that changed everything for me. 

Why non-Attachment?

I’m sure there are multitudes of people who can explain why non-attachment is good from both a spiritual perspective and a material perspective, I’m not one of them. The only perspective I can speak from is from my own experience. It is what I do on this blog.

My ability to detach from energies, people, places, and things is partially a result of doing inner work. This is all in the context of my spiritual awakening, so there was a lot of inner work happening.

By examining my inner workings, healing what was ready to heal, and releasing old energies, I was detaching. Every step of inner work is new awareness, and that moved me forward. And often it was moving me further away from the energies that were no longer aligned or serving a purpose.

With intention, I released the old energies. In my practice, I was releasing the energies that no longer aligned, no longer serving a purpose. (My current favorite is “We release what is ready to be released whether we are aware of it or not.”)

The point of releasing energy is to move past it, let it go, and clear space for new energies. It is how I move forward through my spiritual awakening. But I never thought of it as detaching, which in hindsight it clearly is.

I was detaching, even if unintentionally. Each step of my path was an act of releasing attachment. So, I feel like I stumbled upon a way to acknowledge that I was practicing non-attachment.

Are we Releasing Attachment Without Realizing it?

What if we are all practicing a form of releasing attachment without realizing it? When we do the inner emotional work, when we do the energy work, we are practicing detachment. It may not be obvious in that moment, but in hindsight it seems clear.

Once we have the awareness, we can acknowledge detachment. In other words, we can acknowledge that “we release attachment to ______.” Fill in the blank, we each have our own journeys and have ample opportunity to detach and release attachments in our lives.

Whenever we find ourselves distanced from the energies, people, places, and things that no longer serve us, we can affirm that we have released attachment to them. We can be intentional about releasing attachment to things that are part of our past and not intended to be part of our present moment.

As part of our spiritual paths and practices we can release attachment to what no longer serves. We can release attachment to past energies that have been healed and released. We can release attachment to energies, people, places, and things that no longer are needed, wanted, or desired in our lives.

As we move through our lives and spiritual paths, it is likely that we will leave some energies, people, places, and things behind us. With awareness and intention, we can call it out for what it is, releasing attachment so what no longer is aligned with our Divine life path and soul’s purpose.

I suspect that we are practicing non-attachment more frequently than we give ourselves credit for. And it feels so good to move forward and leave behind the energies, people, places, and things that are no longer serving our Divine life path and soul’s purpose.

The Eagles Knew It All Along.

Take it easy, take it easy.

Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.

Lighten up while you still can.

Don’t even try to understand.

Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy.

Eagles, Take it Easy, Eagles 1972.

The image in this post is from Canva.

I’m grateful you’re here. I love you.

Be well, beautiful soul,

Nikki