Unconditional love. Attachment and fondness or affection are different things entirely.
Have you noticed how love starts as a blossoming flower, fully expressive, radiant and open, and often moves away from that, as expectations replace invitations, creativity dissolves into habit, and fear of loss replaces desire?
Attachment, and Conditional Love, which is really Neediness or fear by a more generous name, are pretty much the same thing, or at least the one causes the other. In relationship, also, the extent to which we have the one, we exhibit the other. This is not roughly, this is EXACTLY. There cannot be any dissociation between the two. They are totally associated…
Maybe we don’t outwardly express that conditional quality, but if there is Attachment then the Conditional Love is there, internally, working away on ourselves at the very least, gnawing, jarring, and this will also influence how we conduct and approach our relationships – and how we feel about them.
I have recently been discussing how Attachment is a different thing to both fondness, and commitment. This is an important distinction to make, because we don’t want to become aloof in interpersonal relations as a result of thinking we’re being ’spiritual’ by being cold or withdrawn, because apart from anything else, if we deny these qualities of fondness and desire and commitment, that in itself becomes Resistance – another form of Attachment.
Attachment, and its opposite, Resistance, is any belief or thought process in which we put our sense of self outside of our already liberated nature, and in things. These things may be people, possessions, protocols, rules or habits, associations, statuses, thoughts, beliefs, our body, or any other things. To enjoy them may be healthy. To directly attach to and identify one’s ultimate sense of self with them leads to self-constriction… and fear.
And with that fear comes self-condition and Conditional Love outwards to others, and in relationships this can be a killer.
So if we can recognise Attachment and Resistance in ourselves in relationship, and we release them and let them go, we shall become naturally and effortlessly unconditional lovers.
Best wishes as always,
James
