Contentment Beyond Attachment
Attachment is an interesting thing to contemplate—in Western psychology, a lot of emphasis is placed on having healthy attachment figures and a secure attachment style. In Eastern traditions, attachment is something that keeps us in the grips of suffering. How do we reconcile this? Perhaps it depends on which vantage point we are looking from and where we want to go. These can go together as stages of psychic development.
Western psychology has contributed a lot to the development of an individual from birth to adulthood. For one to have a healthy psyche, we do need healthy relationships (attachments) when we are young. In fact if we don’t, it sets up a state of yearning for this in our neurobiology, and we get this need met often through substances and other addictions that create a temporary blanket of pleasure and security in our nervous systems.
Eastern traditions offer us a glimpse of freedom beyond our personal needs and wants. And in this way the word ‘attachment’ means something different. It recognizes a core suffering that is inherent in all of us whether these attachment needs were met or not. It is the moment to moment grasping for certainty and control. We go toward things that make us comfortable, and we avoid things that are uncomfortable. On the level of survival this works, but on the level of awakening to our full potential it keeps us stuck. The level of development beyond the personal is transpersonal—it opens us to other dimensions of reality and more vast possibilities. It gives us more of a bird’s eye view of life instead of always on the ground chopping our way through the vines. When we notice the very natural tendency to grasp and avoid, we can stop and shift our gaze to include the periphery and the tone of our attention toward receiving and curiosity. This mindful moment begins to create another pattern in our neurobiology and one that Western psychology would say is the basis for ‘secure attachment’. A ‘securely attached’ person is non-attached to how they expect things to be and are present with what is. From there we are co-creating with reality instead of stuck in limiting patterns.