Attachment

Attachment is an interesting concept. We are attached to our lovers, pets, jobs, possessions and illimitable other things. Attachment can be understood not as "me" but more accurately as "mine". In this context, attachments imply ownership, sovereignty, dominion. I have a book given to me by my father several years ago. It was his, and shows decades of use in the worn bindings and yellowing pages. However, the book has sentimental meaning for me.  Is this attachment? Of course it is. I am perfectly aware that if the book is burned tomorrow or is lost that my physical being will not be damaged, and any mental distress I suffer will only be that which I allow by one means or another.

It is the awareness of attachments that is important. All attachments are voluntarily accepted on one level or another, even if the acceptance was unconscious or the reasons obscure. However, the power of those attachments to rule us is entirely dictated by our awareness of the attachments, as only with knowledge can one choose to either maintain or release that attachment, or to mandate what power it embodies.

One of the most pernicious attachments one must eventually encounter is the attachment to the ego. The ego may be loosely defined as the conscious mind and the apparent personality of the individual. The ego uses reason and other faculties to satisfy the desires of the mind, but who is really minding the store? Is the ego the complete self? Of course not. The ego is a convenient interface of the mind to the universe, again the conscious self that seeks to achieve the desires of the mind when possible and to override them when necessary. The ego deals with desires from conscious and unconscious elements, including suppressed ones and even the desires of the ego itself.

Most people confuse the ego for the self, which is like confusing the receptionist at the front desk for the corporation. People seldom expend the time and patience to explore and integrate the shadow, or to relive and accept traumatic memories and so bring these components into the realm of the conscious instead of the recesses of the unconscious and suppressed unconscious. It is a process of growth, where the whole of yesterday is expanded to become part of a larger whole today. Bringing unconscious elements into the conscious does not mean the ego expands, although that can happen, but rather that there are more and more conscious elements of the self present. This results in a change in the relationships in the mind. With the conscious contents of the self expanding there is a correspondingly smaller percentage of ego. This is not to say the ego gets smaller, but rather that the percentage of the conscious mind that is ego is proportionately smaller due to growth. As the conscious self continues to emerge, the self must give us exclusive identification with the ego.

This is a critical stage. As one ages, this cessation of exclusive identification with the ego allows for further development. With the egoic focus on the satisfaction of desires no longer the exclusive motivator, love for others can manifest to a greater degree and one can to varying degrees emerge into transpersonal awareness. Concern for others, community, nations and global units begins to emerge. Note the parallel here in that the (self) concerns of yesterday expand into the (transpersonal) concerns of tomorrow.