Positional Thinking and Attachment

I really hope that your head hasn’t exploded after last week’s newsletter.  Writing it induced a number of cracks in my skull, and I felt a certain rumbling and agitation in my head this week.  Thankfully, my head didn’t come apart.  But I want to warn you, your head and mind may well explode with the newsletter on your screen right now.

Let’s start with the dualism inherent in positional thinking.  Positional thinking is so ordinary that we rarely give it a thought.  This kind of thinking involves having an opinion about something, and we do that all the time.  But we don’t realize, and we refuse to acknowledge, the simple fact that our positional thinking traps us.

That’s right, it traps us!  It locks us into a particular position, and then we find ourselves defending that particular position.  

I was noticing this as I was watching a college football game earlier today.  Two teams were playing that I really didn’t care about, but after a minute or three, I found myself rooting for one of the teams.  How did that come about?  I don’t know – it just seemed to happen.  When stuff like this happens ‘automatically,’ I start to wonder what’s really going on.  Why did I make this choice, and why did I need to make the act of choosing invisible to myself?

It’s such an automatic response, isn’t it?  We form opinions all the time, often out of thin air, based on little or no knowledge.  We think this is good and that’s bad; this is attractive and that is not.  After the opinion is formed, we then act as if our opinion is the right one.  If someone should happen to challenge our opinion, even if we know little or nothing about the subject, we step up to defend it.  Why?

At least part of the why is because it’s our opinion.  My opinion is special because it’s mine.  I have the fanciful illusion that I own that opinion.  In actual fact, the exact opposite is true.  Once I form an opinion, it owns me.  I find myself defending it, sometimes defending it as if it were the most important thing in the world.  But let’s be serious.  It’s just an opinion, right?  And we each have hundreds or thousands of opinions about virtually everything.  And all of those opinions, plus a couple of bucks, will get you a cup of coffee.

Understanding this about opinions leads us directly into the subject of attachment.  This is one of the most important concepts in all of spiritual thinking, and the Buddha appears to be the original thinker about these matters.  Gautama stated that attachment is the core problem that keeps us from realizing our true nature.  So, what is attachment, and where does it come from?

We often think our spiritual problems are caused by running after money, or chasing after pleasure, or pursuing any of the myriad objects that fascinate us so.  What we are noticing here is our attachments to these goals.

Here’s how it works.  We decide we like something.  Often this seems to occur of its own accord, as a consequence of our dualistic thinking.  Our desire then magically forms an attachment to the object of our desire, and then we chase after it, often spending all our time and energy in its pursuit.  But the problem is not really money or sex or pleasure or any of the attachments that we have created.  The problem lies in the attachment, as well as the illusion that if we grasp the object of our desire, we will be happy and fulfilled.

Stop and think for a minute.  In your life, you have chased many a goal, and you have no doubt achieved many of them.  But how often have these achievements given you any lasting happiness?  

In my experience, there is usually a brief moment of happiness when I accomplish something, but it never lasts for long.  When I compare the effort, the time, and the energy necessary to accomplish some of these goals, it definitely doesn’t seem worth it.  So why do we continue chasing our crazy goals, if, in the end, they are not really worth it?

The reason we chase our goals is for the pleasure and satisfaction we get when we accomplish them.  There is even a strange sort of pleasure in the negative positions we take.  While anger and hatred wouldn’t ordinarily be considered desirable, we often hold on to them.  That is, we attach ourselves to these positions.  Why?  Because when we are angry, we give ourselves a little shot of adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol – so even unpleasant things can be rewarding.  But is this what we really want?  Is the brief satisfaction we get worth the price we have to pay?

It comes down to a simple question:  do you want to know God or not?

If you do, then it will be necessary to give up our attachments to everything else.  Ultimately, we must even relinquish our egos, our sense of self, because in the last analysis, our egos are the final barrier to our union with the Divine.

I would invite you to join me in a simple thought experiment.  Sit back in your chair, position your body in a comfortable way, uncross your legs and ankles, and let your hands rest gently in your lap.  Close your eyes, and then start to let go of what you are presently experiencing. 

Let go of your thoughts.  Oh, they will continue to rattle on, but there is no need for you to pay attention to them for now.  So, for the purpose of our ‘thought’ experiment, let go of the mental part of your life.  For now, stop following them.

Let go of the physical sensations flowing through your body.  Again, your body will continue to exist, and it will continue to pump out sensation after sensation.  For now, however, there is no need to pay attention to those sensations.  Just let go…

Thoughts and sensations will continue to arise in your awareness.  Let them all go.  Notice instead the underlying awareness.  Rest in this contentless awareness for a time.

When your attention is disturbed, when it is caught by a passing thought or sensation, just let it go and refocus on the underlying awareness.  It is as if your awareness is the screen on which your thoughts and sensations are projected.  We don’t notice the screen on which movie images are projected when we go to the movies.  In the same way, we don’t typically notice our awareness as the screen on which our thoughts, emotions, and sensations are projected.  We notice what is projected on the screen of awareness, rather than the awareness itself.  

When you are ready, open your eyes.  Take a deep breath and let yourself be aware, once again, of the flood of thoughts and sensations streaming through you.

When I do this, I feel a sense of lightness, a sense of aliveness.  Everything seems fresh and bright.  My awareness is not all clogged up with stuff – with thoughts, objects-of-desire, sensations, etc.  In its pure form, there are no judgments, there is no duality.  There is just Is-ness…  Awareness.  

My ego is still there, but by letting go of the stuff it usually entertains me with – my thoughts, emotions, and sensations – it is hamstrung.  It can’t function like usual.  I am not facilitating my ego’s running after things, running after objects-of-desire.  And the space that is created by this maneuver allows me to sense what is hiding underneath the cover of the ego and its busyness.  

In doing this, we are relinquishing our judgments and our positional thinking.  We are letting go of our usual experiences so that we can go deeper.  Instead of surface-level thinking and sensation, we begin to experience the deeper parts of ourselves, the parts that are intimately connected with God.  If you will, we open ourselves to the Divine.

This is both our true heritage and our true home.  

By the way, don’t be upset if you have trouble with this.  Having trouble here simply shows us how strong our ego-functioning really is.  And yet, notice how fragile it is as well.  When we engage in this thought experiment in the early stages of our meditative development, the ego goes into overdrive, trying to regain control.  If it succeeds for now, don’t worry.  Our God loves us and is fighting for our freedom.  While the ego is necessary for us to get along socially, it is ultimately a tool that will be discarded.  Nobody bothers riding a tricycle once they learn to ride a bike.  And nobody stays with the training wheels on their bike once they have learned how to balance.  

*  *  *

Well, I need to stop here and give my aching head a rest.  Over the next couple of weeks, we will explore Centering Prayer – one of the great additions to our contemplative toolkit.  So, keep up your daily meditations to the best of your ability.  And, from time to time, give yourself “the pause that refreshes” and revisit our thought experiment above.

With love,

P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at [email protected]. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

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