Emotional pain and attachment to life
October 9th 2012
There is no pain worse than emotional pain. Some news about our selves, our friends, our loved ones, or the story of some stranger having a struggle with life, these evoke strong emotions.
One such emotion is a loss of selfhood. A loss of selfhood occurs throughout life. There are many transitions that contain loss, this category of loss includes; becoming a teenager, graduating school, becoming an adult, becoming a couple, any body issue, and, ultimately the dying process.
Becoming a teenager is the loss of childhood, turning 20, the loss of teenage category. Sometimes the loss is a person and usually begins with the loss of the old and gray, or grandparents, great aunts and uncles. There is sometimes the loss of self due to a dis-ease moving from the formulative state of thought into three dimensional matter. Even a cold or the flu has its origins in the way we think and how that thinking impacts our body.
When some part of us is lost, there is a pause, an unusual state of mind. Our “mind” functions differently. You might call it a trance or shock. Now we apprehend everything differently. Things sound “different”, things seem “different”, the world appears “unreal”. We may come to realizations, we may react in fear, either way, it is an altered experience, that is to say, it is again, “different”.
At any age the threat of loss of some part of our selves is very much a reminder of our eventual passing from earth experience. This happens to all of us. We wear out or rundown, we slow down or pass rapidly, and this is a subject that brings most of us pause.
Every life has changes and challenges and the optimum possible reaction is acceptance. The opposite of acceptance might well be attachment. Acceptance has no fear. No fear means no anxiety, no worry, no anger, no saddness. Acceptance is peace, calm, understanding, farsighted, an expectation that the journey is always leading to greater opportunity to radiate outward these attributes.
How to be accepting with each change and challenge. This is truly the mastery.
Such a mastery is the desire of an inner part of us as we reach for selflessness. Selflessness, the desire to help.