Attachment and non-attachment

Some people think this a hard thing to do and while for some people it is complicated by their not being able to separate themselves out from their emotions. This is crucial because if you think you are your emotions even as you may think you are your body, then it is far harder to achieve non-attachment. This is due to the fact that everything is energy. You emotional body is energy of a fluid type because it is the body of water.

Your mental body is airy, your memory body is fire and your physical body is flesh, blood and bones etc. Now, seeing the emotional body is a watery type of energy, because it is in flow, once you start it moving, it starts to move faster if someone directs emotion at you and feeds your emotional body. If you are just barely holding your emotions in check, then anything can set you off. So the non-attachment is not having any vested energy in the emotion.

Apparently a good exercise for the emotions is patience – play the card game patience. The reason people think their emotional body is real is that they feel it and it appears they give that and their physical body more credence than the more invisible bodies. It is hard to pin down water but even harder to pin down air or fire. The water body, if it gets moving can take you with it and the consequences are usually disastrous.

A tantrum is a good example – energy flies everywhere not usually directed to a particular source. This is why Krishna taught non-attachment. He probably felt that this way the emotions could be held in check. When you are non-attached, some people think you do not feel. The truth is you feel deeply and sometimes it is hard to bring that to the front, for there is a higher emotional body which does not really have much to do with this world.

The problem with negative thinking is that the emotions fuel it and uses it to its own ends and many times you are unconscious of it. This way the emotions are running the show. The thoughts and the emotions and memories create the world you see around you. That is one reason why meditation is useful, so you can become familiar with your thoughts and how they work and using breath, stop them altogether. Also the slower breathing calms the emotions.

Then you can think what you want to think. Instead of a fleeting fancy someone sends in your direction. Hoping to sabotage your life or just for fun. Either way it is not beneficial to the soul. All this, the soul has to deal with and the soul is the only one who has knowledge of everything you have done before. For you are your own soul.