Gwenda Smith The art of non-attachment

The art of

Non-Attachment

ARTICLE GWENDA SMITH

Through her tears she sobbed, “Why must it be so painful, why must I be tested all the time?”

Her heartache was beyond comprehension for her, the sense of the deepest pain in her chest alarmed her, she thought that she was having a heart attack, although never having had a heart attack she was aware there was something much more to this pain, she sobbed so heavily.

Many times, I have heard the plea why it must be so hard, “Why am I faced with so much hurt and challenges in my life?” We can manage the pain, hurt and the distress by bravely lifting our chin and saying, “Oh, but it’s a lesson there’s something for me to learn in all of this.”

For sure everything that comes our way in life offers the opportunity for growth, new awareness, and a new sense of self, after all this is called the human experience.

I often wonder if anyone realises that those words flow are looking for a way to pardon or to excuse a situation or circumstance in their life.

The human experience can be either the golden pathway or it can be a muddy cobbled road, perhaps even a mix but at the end of the day the human experience is what we make of it.

No matter the situation or the circumstance it will always come down to how we are able to centre ground and align ourselves to our true self.

The lived experience of love is most often the one experience that is said to cause us tremendous heartache and heartbreak, but you know in the Taoist teachings there is this incredible learning of non-attachment.

However, the thing about the human experience is that we are taught from very early on to believe in what we can see and touch and so begins the journey of becoming distracted from our truth.

The lesson of non-attachment means that you can experience all that this lived experience brings without having attachment.

When we have attachment, we have expectations; when we have expectations, we have a determination on what we want from a person or from a situation. Think about going for an interview and before you go you’ve talked yourself into this as the job I want, I really want this job.

But then you don’t get the job; tremendous sense of failure. Where did I go wrong? Why wasn’t I good enough? What didn’t I write well enough? What didn’t I say well enough? Perhaps I didn’t answer the questions more clearly and on and on the criticism guys all the while creating disturbance in the sense of alignment and inner harmony.

How do we learn non-attachment when in the western world in particular everything is about attachment because we are taught that we must achieve, succeed, we must be our best, do our best. We are judged by what we wear, the home we live in, the car we drive, of which is attachment to the material world of what we can feel and touch, and we deem this as our status for acceptance and selfworth.

How heartbreak can offer us amazing insights into ourselves but only when we understand nonattachment. In an attachment there is the ability to love without pain, there is the ability to surrender without pain. TRY THESE FOUR STEPS EACH DAY: 1. Welcome your day as if it was the only day. 2. With hand on heart make a claim to the love of self. 3. Call for the guidance of divine light in all that you do in this day. 4. Be the observer of all that you say and think.

Practise the art of non-attachment and you will find life more harmonious; your level of enlightenment and expansiveness of soul will be more than you can imagine.