Buddha said that attachment was the root of all suffering.
But that doesn’t mean it has a monopoly on any one form of suffering. We get rope burns from clinging to anything that’s inherently impermanent, good or bad.
And so, attachment isn’t limited to the sinful pleasures, glittering temptations, fleshy indulgences and wicked delights of the world.
It could also mean thinking that the bad times are going to last forever. Over identifying with our negative feelings, allowing them to keep building and building by feeding them extra ammunition, that’s a form of attachment too.
It’s not as glamorous as the more familiar ego traps, but it’s equally as insidious. And if we want a real shot at true happiness, we have to trust that the sadness will run its course. Otherwise we’ll grow addicted to our own brokenness, presuming that this slump, rut, loop, setback, infinite regression or whatever other catchy label we affix to our own suffering, is who we are.
But it’s not. Especially if we consider it in financial terms.
Any good economist would tell us that no recession lasts forever. That’s a fundamental violation of the natural law of change. History has proven dozens of times over that once the economy reaches its depth, the recovery will begin. And in time, the market will initiate an upward economic trend towards prosperity once again.
It might take a few quarters or even a few years, but certainly not forever. It just feels like forever when you’re knee deep in the thick of it and you just want your life to make sense again.
As each economic recession contains the seeds of the next recovery, so it goes with our emotional lives. Because we already have the capacities for the personal growth that needed to emerge out of the bad times and into the good.
The question is whether we have enough patience and resilience to buttress our hearts in the interim.
Remember, the point isn’t to clean up our lives just enough to keep us going until the next crisis, but to legitimately step into the next stage of our evolution as human beings.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What is your attachment to your story of suffering costing you?
* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat.
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Namaste.
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