Real Magic Studies

LETTING GO OF ATTACHMENT

WHAT IS TRANSFORMATION?

TRANSFORMATION IS A JOURNEY OF LETTING GO.

WHAT DO YOU LET GO OF?

ATTACHMENT

TRANSFORMATION IS A JOURNEY OF MEETING WHO YOU ARE

WHEN THE LETTING GO IS ADVANCED, AND YOU HAVE BECOME VERY GOOD AT IT, YOU BEGIN TO PERCEIVE THAT THERE IS NO ‘YOU’ THAT MUST BE FOUND.

YOU BEGIN TO PERCEIVE THE YOU THAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE.  

YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DIDN’T NEED TO LOOK FOR YOU.

YOU WERE THERE ALL THE TIME. 

YOUR EGO’S POINT OF VIEW INTERFERED WITH YOUR ABILITY TO PERCEIVE THIS TRUTH.

YOU ARE ATTACHED TO YOUR EGO’S POINT OF VIEW

LET GO OF YOUR EGO’S POINT OF VIEW.

BIT BY BIT – PIECE BY PIECE 

LET IT GO.

DON’T TRY TO TAKE THE PAST, YOUR POSSESSIONS, WITH YOU ON THE PATH. 

ANYTHING TRULY YOURS WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU.

DON’T BE ATTACHED TO THE PAST.

DON’T EVEN BE ATTACHED TO THESE TEACHINGS. 

          In his famous parable of the raft, the Buddha explains that his teachings are not a destination; they are a means of traveling. A means of traveling. Spiritual practices are the raw materials from which we can build for ourselves, from revelation and direct experience, a raft of understanding that guides us as we make the spiritual journey across our own uncharted consciousness. The Teachings, the Practices, and the Teacher help us cross the sea to the far shore but the far shore is not a place, it is not a destination. Your evolution does not stop when you reach another shore of reality. The Gift Keeps Moving. We are always learning because the Source of Grace, the Source of Unconditional Wisdom and Unconditional Love is always challenging us no matter how enlightened we think we are.

           So when you reach another shore don’t think you’ve arrived somewhere and you are done so now you can stop. Don’t get attached to your latest revelation. Leave the raft behind and keep walking the path trusting that if ever again you need a raft, one will be there. Walk on to the next experience and use the wisdom you have incorporated and can now call your own to deal with the further challenges. The challenges will seem very different to you because you have changed so much, your emotional content is very different from when you began your initial journey. And because of your deep emotional changes, your new experiences will be different.

          You change in authentic ways because, as you incorporate the teachings into your direct life experience and transformation becomes real to you, you become more present, more true to yourself.  Being true to yourself is a state of being that evolves as you learn to trust yourself, and to surrender your attachment to your ego’s point of view.

           If you try to do your practices while staying attached to your ego’s present point of view, you will never make it across the river and your fear will become attached to your present spiritual experience. Your fear will attach to your practices. Your fear will intensify and if you are not willing to trust the process of transformation, you will stay in your ego’s point of view and your fear will continue to live your life for you. 

           Transformation happens when your point of view come into alignment and no longer shift back and forth from point A to point B and back again to point A then back to point B – you move on into new arrivals and new beginnings. The creative process is a cycle, a circular, spiraling, movement. As you follow that movement, you begin to feel a feeling of liberation and trust in yourself. If you try to define new feelings from your old ego’s point of view this attachment to past teachings can become an encumbrance that prevents a new evolution.

The Buddha, in the raft story, describes attachment as trying to hold on to the raft long after it has served its purpose, long after you have crossed the sea. Holding on to teachings that have become beliefs can hinder your movement. Ideas about ourselves that served us yesterday might fail us tomorrow. Let go and be available to tomorrow’s truth, tomorrow’s wisdom. The Buddha ends the raft story with the conclusion that if one should not be attached to wise teachings, how much more should one not be attached to ignorance?

            The Teachings don’t change, you change. The Teacher doesn’t change, you change.  The Practices don’t change, you change.  Don’t be attached to anything.  Don’t even be attached to change.  As you change, the Teachings begin to be perceived as spiritual ideals and your relationship to those ideals becomes more realistic and less judgmental. Learn to set high standards of accountability for yourself but do not be attached to those standards. Don’t let those standards become judgments. Don’t practice spirituality by the book, practice it by the heart, by the intuition. Let go of self-importance and self-condemnation. If you are taking transformation too seriously, too personally, and too heavily, lighten up. Whatever way you are interpreting your process, your interpretation is probably wrong, so just relax and let yourself move freely and with trust into a creative lifetime of new beginnings, further arrivals on newer shores and a liberation that continues to unfold.

African wisdom proverb: “Be wise like the snake. It sheds its beautiful skin, certain that a more beautiful skin lies underneath.”

Thank you.

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