Dissolving the Chains of Attachment

I've been writing about the difference between love, which is the pure Source-energy expressing itself through our heart chakras, and attachment, which is the feeling of dependence on another to love us that we feel when we confuse actual love with the idea of love.

Human relationships usually contain both love and attachment. Our challenge is to recognize the difference and, when a relationship ends or must change form, to allow the love to survive but dissolve our feeling of attachment to the other person. By so doing, we can transform our emotions of grief, anger, resentment, sadness, or even despair into acceptance.

From my own experience, I know that we can use meditation and visualization to make this transformation. It helps to have an experienced guide in this process, to assist in bringing in spiritual energy that actually changes the frequency of your emotions. But you can also do this on your own, just as you can meditate on your own.

Here is one method I use.

Start by entering a meditative or deeply relaxed and focused state. How you do this is up to you; use any method that you find effective.

Now, visualize yourself and the other person facing each other. Picture your attachment connecting you to this person like cords or chains of light, binding you to one another.

If you can, express your love and gratitude to the other person for the good aspects of your relationship, the love and learning you received from it.

Then visualize a brilliant beam of white Light slicing through the cords, freeing you both. (An alternative method is to ask a spiritual figure whom you trust to cut the cords with a sword of white light. It could be an angel, your own God-Self, Mary, Jesus, Buddha, a guide – any Being of higher consciousness with whom you feel a connection.) The white light represents pure divine love, which never harms, but can transform the nature of our feelings.

Watch what happens. You may see yourself and your beloved drift apart, or some other image may come to mind.

Release the other person, knowing that he or she carries the love and gratitude received from you. This does not end your connections as souls, which is based on love. It only ends the human attachment to having a particular relationship with that person in this lifetime.

Finally, turn your attention to your own heart. Picture white light filling it, soothing any pain there and filling any holes left behind by the attachments you have just released. Feel the warmth of the light, and know that it is pure love healing your wounded heart. Bask in that light as long as you like, and when you feel ready, open your eyes and see how the world looks and feels to you now.

This is a beautiful meditation that allows love to survive, while releasing attachments that keep you bound to unhappiness.

If you want to do more work on love, attachment and relationships, I highly recommend a book by psychospiritual therapist John Welwood called Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. He includes great exercises to help develop your ability to access love directly from within, which in turn strengthens relationships.

Love, Light and Joy,

Susan
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Love and Attachment, Part 2: Attachment

As human beings, we often confuse love with attachment. Actually, human relationships include both.

In the last post, I wrote what my Source told me about how to recognize the difference between love and attachment.

Love, we were told, expands, rises above our natural desire to be loved, wants the best for all. It comes from our inner Self and flows through our heart to others. Thus we often think the other is the source of our love, but in fact it is within us all the time. And love is the same energy, whether it’s for a child or a lover. (For more details, see Love and Attachment, Part 1: Love is Love is Love.)

What, then, is attachment? Here’s the rest of the conversation:

Love if a function of our divine Self, which is ever-expanding, while attachment is a function of our human aspect.

The human mind is often afraid, because it can only predict a future based on past experiences. It can only perceive what is physically present. It knows nothing about eternity, energy, or infinite abundance.

In a finite world, there is only the beloved we know at the moment. The one just over the horizon, just beyond this moment, doesn’t yet exist.

So whenever we are faced with letting go of anyone we love, we anticipate the end of love itself.

“Oh yes,” we say, “there are other people who love me, but it’s not the same!”

No, it isn’t, because we have decided, in our human minds, that this person is the one who will carry our projection of the romantic other, who will represent for us all we think we lack, and who will enable us to have that blissful, deep experience of intimate connection.

Because in that connection with the other, we connect with our own Self.

Finally, I asked, “What can we do about all this, then?”

Dissolve the attachment. Love cannot be dissolved, but it can be released, and it can release the beloved. Or it can be transformed, from lover-love to friend-love, and can manifest a different relationship.

To be ready to let go of attachment, you first need to go through the emotional process of grieving for the relationship. You can't use meditation to short-cut emotional recovery. It doesn't work, and if you do, you will miss the lessons you could gain from the relationship. You would then attract a similar relationship into your life, to give yourself the opportunity to learn those lessons.

Give yourself a break. Learn the lesson this time, so you can move onto a different experience. The learning is the gift found within any painful relationship experience. Let yourself receive, open and appreciate the gift.

When you have grieved, been angry, cried, protested, reflected and finally feel you can accept the end or transformation of the relationship, then it's time to dissolve your attachment so you can move on.

Next time, I'll give you a method to use, either by yourself or with the help of someone experienced in spiritual healing and meditation to guide you. Until then....

Love, Light and Joy,

Susan

... Keep reading!