I remember when mom would say that attachment is what causes us pain. Attachment to things, persons, and outcomes was primarily what makes us miserable. I was always so attached to things as a kid: what I wanted, what I learned, or how I assumed and imagined things were “supposed to be.”
Somehow she understood letting things flow.
When I wanted something, all my energy would be spent on obsessing about it and worrying I wouldn’t get it, and/or worrying that even if I got it—I’d lose it. I would hold on tighter and tighter, trying to control anything I could to make things happen, to make them mine.
That was always my problem, my misery because of my need for ownership, or the need to BE or HAVE the “one” thing, the one person, the one concept, whatever thing I happened to fixate on at the moment. And anytime she and I would talk about my struggles, that’s what it would come down to: I didn’t have to hold on tightly to things, change and flow is natural, and everything I want will come to me in a simpler, faster, and more harmonious way when I don’t fight it.
Mom was the ultimate optimist though. Money and things would flow to her and she just as easily let them go, gave them away to others—and yet was still always lucky and abundant, and infinitely resourceful. I never understood that. Living in this world, how can you literally be that lucky and optimistic about life?
But I noticed no matter how much she enjoyed something or liked it, she could let it go with ease. Sometimes I would even hold off on complimenting some of her things because she’d say, “Ohhh you like it?! Here, you can have it!”
And I’d say, “Noooo I was just appreciating it. It’s yours, keep it.”
But she’d insist.
I was always thinking: but then she won’t have it anymore.
But she was thinking: not only do I want YOU to enjoy it, but things come to me easily. She would always find something else, or something greater.
I was always thinking about scarcity.
But as I’ve lived more, and realized that all the times I stopped fighting things, fighting the process, fighting belief—I typically got what I wanted almost immediately and with no hustle or struggle or burnout. Just knowing that there’s nothing I could actually do to make all the pieces fall into place, all I could do is very simple things in the now, only what I could do with whatever I had in that moment. If I took care of my part, lived my life…then everything else flowed to me.
I’ve made myself go through situations where by what I deem as personal “exposure therapy,” I’ve gotten myself closure about certain things, and have let them go. And they either ended the hold they had on my life—the detriment—and/or I’d feel, receive, or experience something even greater. Always right after a significant epiphany and applying it to my life, something showed up immediately to show me that I had made the right decision to allow things to flow. The path of least resistance.
Probably one of the biggest things that’s taught me to detach, is losing my mom. Not losing her truly, but that her body died and I no longer have the physical representation of the woman who gave me life. I thought I was going to die when she did, I couldn’t see how life would even be possible after our life together.
A few years later, I’m living, I’m even laughing, even though her death was the single most traumatic thing I’ve experienced in my life. And yet, even though a version of myself died horribly along with her in the depths of that grief, I’ve somehow lived through it. Here I am. Able to thrive, able to self-actualize.
And if I can physically live all these years without the physical presence of the love of my life here, then I can surely let go of attachment to anything else in life: any other experience, or thing, or person, or achievement I thought I wanted—because it all means nothing. None of it is such a great loss, or such a great thing I’m missing out on.
All I live for now is enjoyment and true connections. I know she’s here, and while no one would ever accept that because they want pRoOf, all I can feel is the knowingness that we’ve never been apart. I was just so attached to the body that gave birth to me, the one that held me, the one I spoke to, the one I loved. But then I realized once she was “gone” that it wasn’t her body I loved, it was a part of her, sure—one that I was used to. I adored her as an entire being, but her spirit and our connection was always our truest bond.
It still always hurts, and often to the point of tears again. But then I think of how beautiful it is to even be able to feel this way for someone. This grief, this loss. How much I am loved, and how much I am capable of loving.
And as tragically painful and somehow personally death-defying as this loss of a true love feels—if my body is not physically dying from this pain (and I’ve definitely thought I would die from the pain), and I’m surviving this agony—then knowing that nothing can truly be taken away from me, and if I lose it I still survive—and knowing that nothing is even truly mine anyway, it frees up a ton of my energy.
Why do I still fear loss then? Why still the attachment? It’s the feeling of it that terrifies me.
Instead of worrying and trying to keep things, or trying to make things happen, all I have to do is let it all be. With or without my help I’ll be where I need to be, things will be as they should be, and any fight I put up will never make anything go any faster, or any better, or any easier.
This is nature. Creation & conception, birth, growth & decay, death.
I can’t fight that. Everyone will meet the same fate regardless of how. So if I can’t affect or stop the biggest thing out of my control, then why would I spend any of my energy on forcing any of thelittle things anymore? Or feeling a monumental indignation that things are not as I would have planned for them to be?
Because I still want some semblance of control. I want to be the all-powerful deity. I want to pacify myself—soothe myself that I can do things my way. And for what? Whose benefit is that even for? Certainly not mine, because I’m thinking with my human unevolved mind versus my infinite one that knows all things and knows that the best way to get to our end goals is without fighting.
But no, I ignore a mind of infinite simpler possibilities because I want to be the one who gets the credit for having aChiEvEd it.
I can’t achieve shit! All I can do is come up with tests and things, and “proof” that I meet some type of standard worthy of praise. But really, I’m just a vessel by which things occur. I get no credit. I’m basically a traffic marker for energy and manifestation: flow this way, or that way, or through me. But nothing I do is an accomplishment. Maybe a discovery, but not by my own human merit, just by the greater infinite consciousness that we are all a part of.
I miss her, even though she’s never left me. But I guess what I’d like to transcend is the awful feeling of if I DID truly lose her, that the loss should not be able to have a hold on me. But I know it will always have a hold on me. I allow myself this one major misery.
The true lesson that I can take from this is that I need to feel and know to live with and without loss. Or with or without even the fear, thoughts, or worries of loss. I’ve had to learn this physical “detachment” from when my mom’s body died. Not that I’ve truly felt myself learn it as much as: there is NOTHING I can do about it, even by any form of illusion. At one point you just can’t lie to yourself anymore. It’s impossible.
And now I have to apply this principle to everything and everyone—to not have this painful attachment to all physical evidences and persons. If I could just not have the need to claim any type of ownership over this physical realm, and just enjoy and indulge in the experiences and connections in this world without needing to hold dominion over any of them.
When I’m alone, and in my mind, quiet in my own ethereal space, with my eyes closed…I am everything.
I am creating it, receiving it, flowing it through me and away from me. All resources are already here, all my loved ones are here with me—I just have to see it and believe it in the “real” world.
But that’s my struggle: when it’s real in the physical world, it’s as true as it can be. As tangible as it can be. And that is what causes my ultimate struggle while simultaneously the ultimate enjoyment (for now).
All things, all concepts, all people are here with me, but I have to feel it to know it. Or do I have to know it to feel it? And if we are together through all of it, then the physical separation—the physical favoritism—is not the problem. It’s the fact that I see physical separation as the end all of what we are and what we want to experience—especially with anyone else.
Togetherness should be a beautiful gratitude of its own. A mutually loving physical presence is proof of a rich experience that we can also indulge in this life, not the only experience. The richness is funneled down from being together infinitely—connected—not only in our human form. This form is simply a way to express creation with each other.
How beautiful to be able to share times of our lives, to share the many physical intimacies afforded by our biological physicality: affection for the variety of relationships we experience. Tender looks, hand holding, sharing laughter, deep hugs, kissing, sex, or simply touching someone and emanating love to them. All the many ways our souls have created to show affection. Simply a variety of opportunities to know each other in this finite existence in these physical bodies, despite the accompanying limitations of time, space, and capabilities.
It’s the cherry on top to knowing you’re forever bonded spiritually to another person, to another cell in the grand consciousness. That we come from the same place, and we’ve always known each other. That even here we’ve been blessed to be together in a “real” way, a tangible, provable, evidential way (by the standards we set in this society, whether we accept them or not).
Still…while intellectually appreciating all of this, and knowing that I am infinite and not eternally bound by the obsessions and attachments of this human body and existence, I struggle in the day-to-day to live it out. To not let things destroy me or bother me or even flinch—how can I eventually get there?
Ava Loreimy 