Chapter 15

GIVE UP ATTACHMENT

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?

—BUDDHA

MY STORY

I think it’s time for me to leave Mindvalley, I remember thinking to myself one morning as I was preparing to go to work.

On some level, it felt crazy for me to want to leave behind the great life I was living, all the people I loved, my job, the regular paradise island vacations, and the work I was doing at Mindvalley. And so I decided to ignore those “irrational” thoughts and what my heart and intuition were asking me to do, hoping that by doing so, I would silence their voice in the end.

However, the more I tried to silence my inner voice and ignore the many signals and messages that my heart and intuition were sending my way, the more restless I began to feel and the more aggressively my body seemed to react to what I was doing.

I got sick that year like I had never been sick in my whole life, and I had days when I literally couldn’t get up from my bed to go to work, crying my eyes out and fearing that I would get fired for being sick all the time.

“Get up! Move!” I kept telling myself one morning after being in bed for almost one week.

“Please get up! You have to go to work! You’ll soon get fired if you don’t!”

But my body didn’t want to move. It no longer wanted to listen to me. And I knew that things were only going to get worse and worse if I continued to pretend that I didn’t know what was causing me all that pain, sickness, anger and unhappiness.

I was in denial for months, not wanting to face the truth, thinking that if I let go of my attachment to all the things I so much loved, I was going to go back to feeling unhappy, unworthy and unloved. I was going to lose everything, and I was going to go back to living a life that had no purpose and no meaning.

I tried very hard to keep life from taking its natural course, hoping that by clinging to everything and everyone, I was going to be allowed to keep all those people, places and experiences forever in my life. What I failed to realize was that I was no longer happy and that I was already feeling alone, lost, unloved and unworthy. I was already living a life that no longer had purpose, that no longer had meaning. And I was already losing everything by trying to cling to everything.

• • •

“Vishen, I think it’s time for me to leave Mindvalley,” I said one day during our lunch together.

“I’ve been trying very hard to keep this from happening, but for some reason unknown to me, my heart and intuition are asking me to leave the life I have here and start a new life someplace else.

“I love this place and I don’t want to leave. It makes no sense to my rational mind, but I am tired of trying to resist. I just know that I am being called to leave and move on to the next chapter.”

By the time I finished telling him all that I had to say, a great sense of inner peace had enveloped me, and all of a sudden I felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my heart. And in that moment I knew that I had done the right thing.

Little did I know that the next chapter involved me returning to Romania to complete this book, and to make peace with the tragic childhood memories of my upbringing, so that I could find deeper happiness and fulfillment.

LESSONS IN LETTING GO

As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery . . . we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.

—DALAI LAMA

Having had a very unhappy upbringing, I thought I was supposed to cling to all those things, people, places and experiences that made me feel happy and loved. I thought it was my job to hold on to them because if I didn’t I was going to lose everything and go back to feeling lost, unloved and unhappy. And the moment life “forced” me to surrender, to give up my attachment and to trust that if I did so life would take even better care of me, that was the moment I realized that happiness will never come from holding on to things, but only from letting them go.

Simona, a friend and neighbor of mine, knows about this all too well. After the death of her newborn son, Simona fell into a deep depression. The memory of her walking back home from the hospital without her little boy in her arms drove her very close to the edge. Her health started deteriorating, her marriage began to fall apart, and her will to live was almost gone. She couldn’t think of anything else except her little boy who never got to receive the love and affection of his parents. Simona was eventually able to let go when she realized that her attachment was poisoning all areas of her life, interfering not only with the love she had for her lost child, but also with the love she had for herself, her husband and for life itself. This shift in perception helped heal many of her wounds. It filled her heart with love, and it also brought a lot of light and peace to all those places where there had once been so much pain and darkness.

Letting it all go was the best decision she could make, and it was an eye-opening experience for Simona, and for her husband as well. It was almost as if they rediscovered themselves and fell back in love, after a very stormy and dark period. The love for their baby was still there, in their hearts, but they decided to live in the present and not let that loss define the rest of their lives.

Everything in life changes. Nothing stays the same. And the more you try to cling to things, desperately trying to control and change the natural course of life, the more you will suffer and the unhappier your life will get.

When you hold on too tightly to everything and everyone, when you desperately try to cling to things, people, places and experiences, you take the life out of them and you keep life from taking you where you need to go.

Happiness can never come from attachment to transitory things. It can only come from letting go. Freedom can never come from clinging. It can only come from giving up attachment.

THE PATH TO “GIVING UP”

1. Nothing in Life Is Yours to Keep

All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.

—OSHO

Nothing in life is yours to keep—not your children, not your friends and family, not your lover, not your material possessions, not your youth and vitality, not your struggles (which is great news) or successes, not your body and not even your life. Everything in life is given to you for a short period of time, to enjoy, to learn from, to appreciate and to love, but never to keep.

Things, people, and experiences all come and go. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, and the more you resist this truth, the more you try to control the natural course of life by clinging to transitory things, the more complicated your life will get and the more you will continue to suffer.

People try to hold on to life because they fear dying. But learning to live isn’t about grasping on to things. It isn’t about clinging to everything and everyone. It’s about learning to let go.

Learning to live is learning to let go. Learning to let go is learning to be happy.

Learning to live is learning to let go.

Let go of your attachment to your past, to those you love, to your material possessions, to your ideas, thoughts and feelings, and allow yourself to be free.

Bring a final end to your clinging. Bring a final end to your suffering. Awaken from the ignorance you have been living in for so long and accept life as it is. Know that, as Bodhidharma put it, “Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything.”

2. Contemplate Deeply on the Truth of Impermanence

What is born will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low.

—SOGYAL RINPOCHE

Reflect on the transitory nature of life. Remind yourself that nothing in this life is yours to keep, that everything in life has a beginning and an end, that nothing lasts forever and that eventually everything fades away. Remind yourself as often as possible that happiness can never be found in clinging, that it can only be found in letting go.

Look outside in nature for evidence of decay, destruction, death, rebirth, rejuvenation and renewal. And remind yourself that you too are part of nature. That you too are going through these natural stages.

Allow nature to be your wise friend, teacher and trusted companion. Allow nature to heal and comfort you, to teach you more about the infinite circle of life, about life, about love and about letting go. Adopt the pace of nature. Do what nature does. Live like nature lives.

Reflect on your mortality and on everyone else’s mortality, no matter how cold and morbid that might seem, and know that doing this will help you let go of your attachments and it will help you make peace with your mortality. This is when you start to fully live your life. Because just as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said, “It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.”

Contemplate deeply on the impermanence of things, and when you do so your whole life will forever change, for the better.

3. Release All Grasping and Relax into Your True Nature

He who knows me as his own divine Self breaks through the belief that he is the body and is not reborn as a separate creature. Such a one is united with me. Delivered from selfish attachment, fear, and anger, filled with me, surrendering themselves to me, purified in the fire of my being, many have reached the state of unity in me.

—BHAGAVAD GITA

You are the main character in the story of your life, just like everyone else is the main character in their own story. And the relationship you have with your true self, with your inner divinity and with the source of all things should be the most important relationship in your life. Just as it should be the most important relationship in everyone else’s life. Why?

Because only by honoring ourselves and only by living our lives from a place of truth, honesty and integrity can we be of service to one another, and only by being true to ourselves can we be true to one another.

In the New Testament this idea is portrayed so beautifully: “He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). In The Prophet by Khalil Gibran as well: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

We are all here for a reason. Each and every one of us has a purpose to fulfill. And that purpose and that reason isn’t about clinging to transitory things; it isn’t about getting attached to people, places and experiences and then using them as an excuse for why we can’t live the life we are meant to live.

You may be a parent, you may be a wife or a husband, a friend, a sister or a brother . . . and even though it’s natural to love and care for those close to you and want the best for them, the important thing is to never cling to anyone, to never act as if you possess those around you, to never interfere with who they are and the path they need to walk on, and to never allow them to interfere with who you are. Never allow the “obligations” of being in a relationship with the people in your life to stand in the way of who you truly are, or in the way of doing the work that your soul came here to do.

Give up attachment and allow yourself and everyone around you to live the life they are meant to live. Don’t play God with anyone. Know that just as you have your own unique path to walk on, so does everyone else.

Release all grasping and relax into your true nature.

4. Love Everything, Be Attached to Nothing

Pleasure in its fullness, cannot be experienced when one is grasping it. I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home in the car, she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children. And lots of spouses do it to each other. They hold on too hard, and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is . . . To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it.

—ALAN WATTS

Many people confuse their clingy, fearful and possessive behavior with love, failing to realize that love and attachment have nothing to do with each other. Attachment comes from a place of fear—fear of losing everything you have; fear of not being able to re-create the life you are currently living; fear of losing the love of those close to you, fear of losing your social status, your wealth and material possessions, fear of dying, and so on, while love . . . well, real love is pure and kind, and its only interest is in loving.

Love has no interest in clinging, possessing or in keeping the people in our lives bound to us. Love only wants to love.

Love yourself. Love your life, your children, your spouse, your friends, your work and your living environment. Love and appreciate the many things, people and experiences that life sends your way, but don’t try to cling to them. Keep yourself, your relationships and your whole life free from bondage, and when the time comes to let go, when life asks you to let go, do so with grace.

Give up all your attachments and allow love to free you from the self-made prison you have been living in for so long. Allow love to run through every cell of your body and to govern all areas of your life.

Let love teach you that happiness will never come from possessing, from clinging or from holding on to impermanence, but only from letting go.

Let go of attachment and allow yourself to become one with love. Because love is who you are. Love is what you are made of—and what you are made for.