Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today’s edition of ‘Conscious Living with Purnima’.
I have been exploring the way attachments play out in my life and influence me. I have also been consciously working on loosening my hold on some of them. Today, I invite you to join me in this exploration.
The scriptures tell us that the highest form of actions are the ones done without attachment. These are called akarma’s and are considered superior because they have no positive or negative reactions and thereby set us free.
When I examined my life & the attitude with which I carried out certain actions, I realised that a detached attitude - doing work for the sake of the work or a practice for the sake of the practice not only gave me good results but also helped me conserve energy.
On the other hand, whenever my emotions got involved with the action- fear, expectation, boredom, avoidance etc. the results were mixed & were often accompanied with a lot of energy expenditure.
While it may not be possible for us to perform all of our actions with detachment, we can begin to notice the degree of attachment that we have and consciously let go of some of that to create more space & freedom.
Some areas to explore & dig deeper may include:
Your attachment to your comfort zones:
For instance, do you quit on learning to swim if you are afraid of water? (Swim can be replaced with anything else you are hesitant to do)
To release that attachment, how about first wetting your feet to get comfortable with water instead of quitting?
Your attachment to your self-image:
For instance, do you hold back from speaking your mind when what you feel is contrary to popular opinion or waver to try something new/different?
To let go, how about opening up to a smaller audience for a start?
Your attachment to people who have no time for you:
Do you care too much for those people's attention who don’t offer you any?
To release that, how about making a conscious choice to choose only those people who choose you?
Your attachment to your past:
Do the mistakes you have made in the past come to haunt you?
To be free, how about looking for the lessons and forgiving yourself just a little bit if not fully?
Your attachment to how things should be and the urge to find solutions to all of your life problems:
To loosen that grip, how about doing what you can and being ok with how things turn out? How easy or difficult is that for you?
Your attachment to habits that don't serve you:
Do you even recognize these habits? Can you label them?
Exploring and recognizing our attachments, especially the ones that don't serve us opens up the door to releasing them. We may not be able to release them fully today, but we can get started with loosening the hold just a little bit and experience for ourselves how that makes us feel & function.
As a new week starts tomorrow, I invite you to pay more attention to the motives behind your actions and the results they bring.
Find Purpose; Means Follow; Action (on a lofty. good social good) may have an "attachment" (passion) to it and is good - as along as we are not "Attached" to its results.... Nishkamya Karma - a self-less action!