Surrendering the UnSurrenderable

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached” ~ Simon Weil

“Be attached to nothing and open to everything.” ~ Dr. William Dyer

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Attachments are really only a problem when you run up against them.

“Duh,“ you might say, but think about it.

So long as we are proceeding (or think we are proceeding) in some fashion towards the things we are attached to, they don’t cause us any pain. Which means, even the most conscious of us may be harboring deep adherence to ideas, events, lifestyles, and outcomes with no real understanding of just how profoundly we are committed to their manifestation.

I have, in my own way, spent a lot of time letting go of the life towards which I thought I was headed. I have wrestled, fought, cried, mourned, and surrendered.  And I am so very clear that I am better for it – my life more purposeful and meaningful, more joyous and sweetly tender.

But now I’m up against an attachment that I have no idea how to let go of, an attachment so strong that I actually feel physically ill at the thought of not achieving it.

It’s not that I haven’t been aware that this attachment existed. In fact, it’s been a driving force, the harbor towards which my compass was set… but I always sort of assumed that, if I did my self-work, helped others in theirs, and was generally useful, time would eventually bring it to pass. And while I fretted over it, I never really owned the idea that it may not, in fact, be in the cards.

And now it’s up… and it’s up BIG TIME.

And I realize how unimportant all those things I’ve already let go of really were; there’s not one of them who’s loss was as unimaginable, nor without which life seemed so inconceivable, or, at least, pointless.

So what do you do when you’re a conscious person, aware that the only way out is through, when your direct experience is that letting go is indeed the pathway to greater bliss and yet, you can’t force your own surrender? Or even surrender into your own surrender?

I don’t know.

(This is where that Spiritual Pepto would come in REALLY handy.)

So far, I’m doing a lot of breathing, and trying to sit still in the discomfort, making every effort not to fill what feels like the Universe’s painful silence with my own noise.

And I’ve decided that, while I can’t imagine letting this go forever, perhaps I can give myself a vacation. Maybe a measured break from thinking about it or trying to attain it will give me some distance, some perspective, some objectivity – a way of looking at this that will reveal the pathway through to the other side.

It’s a “one day at a time” proposition – because, through it all, there is a really amazing, beautiful life to lead, work to do, laughter to share, joy to spread, wisdom to uncover, discover, and recover, other, smaller actions to take…

And “one day at a time,” that is enough.

“Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to imagine.” ~ Colm Tóibín