- and first a note on Attachment Theory.

How attached are you to your belief in God (monotheism) or gods (polytheism) or neither? How attached are you to your attachments — what ever they may or may not be?

How we form our attachments and how we attach to this, that, or other person, place or thing we learn early on. It is a given in neuroscience that we feel and behave as we do or not because we have configured our brain circuits or neural network in a way to predicate said behavior.

When we take a step back from our being-in-the-world, we might find that we:

• avoid confrontation leaving situations unresolved;
• are hyper-vigilant at hints of rejection;
• are somewhat manipulative; or
• are compulsively self-reliant;
• are able to share in mature and rewarding relationships and
• are comfortable being interdependent and close to others.

How we are in the world demonstrates our attachment style. Given brain plasticity, we can re-configure our neural network for the health, benefit, and well-being of our own selves and our community of family, friends, associates, and acquaintances, and strangers.

There is a three step process in resoliving any condition:
1) Simple Recognition
2) Conscious Awareness
3) Stop Resisting

The first step is to recognize that there is a situation inviting resolution. Attachment Theory offers insight. In general, some of us came to sense early on

• that there was someone, usually our primary care giver, who served us as a dependable source of comfort and safety.
• that our primary caregiver was undependable — being sometimes present or not.
• that our primary care given was absent or present yet rejecting.

In each instance, we configured our neural network in response to the universe's offering.

If our primary care giver was dependable, we built our neural network on protocols of security. We came to realize that the people we make important in our lives are available and supportive when we need them to be such. We remember our childhood and do not defensively block out negative experiences we all have encountered as just a part of life. Whatever life problems arise, we know we can manage them. We demonstrate a high degree of patience and tolerance when we encounter less than ideal behavior or situations. In short, our default position is one of basic affection, gratitude, and trust of our selves and others.

If our primary care giver was undependable we built our neural network on protocols of anxiety. We find that we are unable to relax as we do not sense that we are essentially safe. We try sometimes very hard to be close to others and never succeed. We use passive-aggressive behaviors to get what we want when we are desperate. Our relationships are often times coupled with unrecognized anger and self-righteous disappointment. In short, we believe that others will be unable to help us if we need them.

If our primary care giver was absent or rejecting — using behaviors that kept us distant from the care giver, we built our neural network on protocols of avoidance. We essentially gave up on others psychologically and emotionally. We are quite proficient of not needing other people. Our primary goal is to achieve emotional independence and to be near totally self-reliant. We turn a blind eye to our own failings because to see our faults threatens our need for others upon whom we cannot trust. In short, we form relationships that are at best superficial and cool without any real intimacy and affection.

What is your general life pattern? Secure? Anxious? Avoidant? In practice, we may be a bit anxious and avoidant or a bit avoidant and anxious. We have met some people who seem totally secure only to realize that such is but a mask. Do you honestly trust in your own goodness and the goodness of others? Do you confront issues head on or brush them aside, avoiding conflict?

Are you consciously aware that you have turned others away and have created an island onto your own self - even though you are in a committed relationship? Are you consciously aware of just how passive-aggressive your behavior is? Are you aware as to why you are consistently dismissed as irrelevant in the work or relationship arenas?

Conscious awareness is the second step following simple recognition. In resolving our addiction to attachment, we have to "bottom out". We not only intellectually recognize the situation, but we also sense our conscious involvement in creating our neural network to defend that which we have come to make sacred: Me, Myself, and I.

Underlying all attachment — be it secure, anxious, or avoidant — is just fear. How is one afraid if one is totally secure? Whether or not one is secure is but an ego function, is it not? Security is a built psychological construct, just like anxiety or avoidance.

To some it is more obvious how anxiety and avoidance are psychological constructs and how security might be taken as the ideal or norm by which the other two are measured. Yet, the undeniable realization remains: security also is a built psychological construct. Being secure is just as limiting as being anxious or avoidant. Each is but a screen to provide a (delusive) sense of saftey, therefore, to assauge fear. Of what — when every is said and done — am I afraid?

All defenses to this realization of elemental fear are in themselves deflections the ego uses to defend itself, to survive, resting secure in the illusion of its own reality having succumbed to the delusion of its own rectitude, based upon the allusions or stories it has created about itself being right. Or as summarized: all defenses are but dreamlike products of illusion,delusion, anad alusion.

The third step following conscious awareness of the so-called Human Condition is to stop resisting, stop trying to change the situation. The more we resist the reality of the moment, the more it remains the same. Enter paradoxical intention. The moment we surrender to the givens of the moment — pain and suffering under any guise — we let the electrical charge go and diffuse the situation in the moment.

When you put into practice Tarthang's meditation later on in this program, you'll find the same information only said differently. Of what — when every is said and done — your fear will become strikingly clear?

If you'll notice in your own train of thought, often times you'll be generating two contradictory thoughts, one positive and another negative. For example: You might generate the thought: Gee, I'm happy. Then immediately pops the thought: No, you're not. Which is true? Neither! The more we then try to get rid of the thought No, you're not, the thought becomes bigger and bigger. This could be very frustrating. What to do? Surrender to the thought No, you're not. Actually feel or sense not so much the content of the thought, but more so the box the thought is in. Every thought is its own unit as an electrical charge. Then metaphorically move the box to Trash, inhale, exhale and consciously just let it go - much like you let your self go to sleep at night. Just let it be gone. Fiat!

Practice makes perfect. By the way, eventually you'll let the thought that you are happy also vanish and you are then free to enter the proverbial Kingdom of Heaven. You have re-awakened your natural mind of a child, selfless, having let go of your unnecessary conditioning and memory, without being pressured by time and, hence, not needing to distract yourself with anger, impatience or any other ego neuroticisms. Yes, you can be angry and you just let it go. Yes, you can be happy and you just let it go.

You live, enjoying Life, without self. Your self-identity becomes one of absolute contradiction, where all opposites enfold in unicity (L unicus: single). (The unicity we strive not to express, for that is impossible, but to designate by the nearest analogy. Notes on English Divines, S. T. Coleridge p. 169). With such a perspective, you are no longer bound in the intellectually bifurcated (i.e., divided into two) state of consciousness that knows only dualism. Attachment.

Without self, there is no attachment. Without attachment, there is no unnecessary pain and suffering. Without unnecessary pain and suffering, we can enjoy the moment - whether or not we are happy, mad, glad, or sad - as it is just what it is as it is. There is no contradiction, no consistency, no inconsistency.

David Bohm's summation of Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics makes more than perfect sense:

May we but just witness a child living in such a marvelous world, taking it in and letting it go. May we remember that we each chose to stop letting it go as we matured our neural networks. And with our brain's plasticity, we can now re-orient our perspectives. Many blessings to you and yours. Peace and Joy!