12-29-03
MEASURING OUR ATTACHMENTS
Once I was paying $45 a month to store some stuff. One day the logical question hit me, “Is this stuff worth $45 a month?” I went to the storage bin and decided it wasn’t. I threw away some of it, gave some away and was amazed at how little of it I kept.
We are creatures of habit and one of our habits is attachment to stuff. And I mean an illogical and self-defeating attachment.
The Buddha taught that suffering comes from attachment. To me, that does not mean all attachment is bad. It means we should be alert to the wisdom of our attachments.
Once again I am de-stuffing my life. I had a room full of stuff when I moved to my current address. Because I live alone and didn’t need the room, I left it piled there. Now I have come up with a use for that room and am going through the stuff there.
I am making three lists labeled, “Could easily part with,” and “Requires some thought,” and “No way I could give it up.” When I get through I am going to look at what I have kept and ask one more question: “Is there anything, anybody, or any experience I would prefer over this item?”
That last question is based on a law I found to be 100 percent dependable – the Law of the Vacuum. Every time we move somebody or something out of our life, it creates a vacuum and something else comes to fill that space. When someone moves out of your life either by their choice or yours, think of the kind of person you want to fill that vacuum, visualize that person, and stay open to finding them and a problem person leaving can often make room for a satisfying relationship to appear.
Take something as simple as old LPs. I have a couple of thousand. Music is one of my passions. As I move LPs out of my life, I am putting those I love most onto CDs. The vacuum is being filled by something better.
Hold me in your light as I de-stuff. It is one of the deepest psyche cleansings of all. We run into all kinds of old internal boogie bears, fetishes, skeletons, cravings, habits and attachments. That is why we do so little of it. We don’t want the trauma of such a deep spiritual cleansing.
But…here I go!
Dalton’s website is www.daltonroberts.com.
All his writings are gathered at www.IPSFeatures.com.
Write him at DaltonRoberts@comcast.net.
