Non-attachment is the big cheese, the big kahuna, of meditation. "What," you ask, "is non-attachment?"
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Buddhism asserts that the root of all suffering is attachment. Yikes. When you look at your own life, particularly the rocky roads of yore, I think you will find this to ring true. All that sorrow, pain, and frustration inevitably comes from losing something you were quite attached to: a relationship, a job, a dream, an expectation, or an idea of oneself. So, Buddha had something here.
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First know that non-attachment is not detachment. We are not cool and detached from loving and living a very human life. Non-attachment is to be in this world, but not of this world. We are encouraged to love our things, to have fun with our jobs, our relationships, our dreams. We are invited to be in these things
fully present, fully aware of their abundant gifts. However, at the end of the day, non-attachment is a deep knowing that although you may possess or experience these things at some time in your life, you are not these things.
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What are you, then? You are something infinite and unchanging. You are deeper, wider, truer, more-so than any temporary circumstance or condition that life throws your way. You are Source Energy. You can create a myriad of things for you and your life, but you are not the thing itself, you are the creative field that does the creating. This field, this source, sustains you unconditionally and eternally.
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Through meditation, we visit this field of awareness. Even if for a second or two a day. When you touch this space, it is timeless, wordless, condition-less. It is pure. And, much life a ship that changes it’s course by a nano degree yet ends up in an entirely different location, that brief glimpse of your true nature can bring you to a completely different place in your life; a space where circumstances and experiences come and go like seasons, and the root of it all is pure awareness. This awareness knows that you are unfettered- evolved, perhaps, but not changed.
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If you are thinking to yourself that all your experiences have changed you significantly, then you are thinking from your ego. I say this without judgment for I am fully aware that ego has it’s proper place in our life. And yes, your ego does change. But your ego is the surface mind, it is a part of the personality, the human aspect. Dig deeper still and there lies your Compassionate Observer, the Knower, the Watcher. Come to know this space in you and you will feel into the changeless, timeless space of which I speak.
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How, you ask? Meditate!
