Attachment Quotes

[On marriage and permanent attach

When I consider the men (like my father) I have treated in psychotherapy, I recognize the challenge I face as a counselor. These men are in counseling due to an insistent wife, troubled child or their own addiction. They suffer a lack of connection with the people they say they love most. Chronically accused of being over controlling or emotionally absent, they feel at sea when their wives and children claim to be lonely in their presence. How can these people feel “un-loved” when (from his perspective) he has dedicated his life to their welfare?Some of these men will express their lack of vitality and emotional engagement though endless service. They are hyperaware of the moods, needs and prefer-ences of loved ones, yet their self-neglect can be profound. This text examines how a lack of secure early attachment with caregivers can result in the tendency to self-abandon while managing connections with significant others. Their anxiety and distrust of the connection of others will manifest in anxious monitoring, over-giving, passive aggressive approaches to anger and chronic worry. For them, failure to anticipate and meet the needs of others equals abandonment.

Chemistry is not destiny, certainly. But these scientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and kind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions well. And how do you do that? It is not magic. First, as much as possible, you protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress; then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two. That's not the whole secret of success, but it is a big, big part of it.

Once an opinion is formed, there will be attachment-abhorrence. A person without opinion is also without attachment-abhorrence.

[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be. (95)

We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being.

He who sacrifices his respect for love basically burns his body to obtain the light.

Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.

Attachment parenting, Sears writes, "immunizes children against many of the social and emotional diseases which plague our society," producing children who are "compassionate," "caring," "admirable," "affectionate," "confident," and "accomplished" ("faster than a speeding bullet," "more powerful than a locomotive," and "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" seem to have been left off the list!).

Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle.

The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment figures are also principal abusers.

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks:1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one‘s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, "They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourty-three?" Yes, these are tall orders but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex-toy.

What do the vitarags [the enlightened one] say? This world will keep on running, You do not interfere with anything in it. If you want to attain ultimate liberation (moksha) then you will have maintain a state of vitaragta (state free of attachment).

The past is no good if you can't learn from it; therefore, no sense in dwelling on it.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

To empty the heart does not mean to not love. On the contrary, true love, as God intented it, is purest when it is not based on a false attachment. The process of first emptying the heart can be found in the beginning half of the shahada (declaration of faith).

Chit’s tendencies can become pure [transparent] in front of God, but people don’t have this knowhow. The easiest solution to purify chit’s tendencies is to associate with a person who has the least amount of desires and the ultimate solution to make them pure is the inner visual contemplation (niddidhyasan) of the Vitarag (the enlightened ones who are free of all attachments).

Attachment and Expectations are the two biggest killer elements of happiness in everyone's life.Learn the art to monitor and control these killers to bring happiness back in your LIFE!!!

Abhorrence towards bitter circumstances and attachment towards sweet ones is the nature of agnan (ignorance of the self). Bitter and sweet will not exist if agnan (ignorance of the self) leaves.

I am more emotionally attached to book characters than actual people in my life.

John Donne's 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning' concerns a sea voyage, and uses the image of a circle as an antidote to the abyss of loss and separation. He pictures the invisible but precious bonds which link carer and cared-for, lover and beloved in an attachment relationship as slender threads of gold.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings. You need to build your home in your own simple existence, not in friends, lovers, your career or material belongings, because these are things you will lose one day.

for to have a deep attachment for a person (or a place or thing) is to have taken them as the terminating object of our instinctual responses."Separation anxiety. International Journal of Psycho-Analysts, XLI, 1-25 (1959(

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today`s shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift.

Abide not with dualism,Carefully avoid pursuing it;As soon as you have right and wrong,Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost. (172)

Theirs was a tug-of-war and neither could let go. Both felt the burn and still wouldn't let go. Some might call it a game for neither could admit defeat.

Illusory attachment (moha) is indeed what will keep on biting you until the point of your demise!

True love is not a hide and seek game: in true love, both lovers seek each other.

The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.

[Let] go of your attachments: your attachment to being right, to having total control, or to living forever. This process of letting go is integral to the process of becoming whole.

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

Attachment-abhorrence is an ‘effect’ and ignorance (of the self) is the ‘cause’!

The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

Grief is a good thing. It's the way we get through the transitions of life.

Lust, anger, attachment, greed, over pride be,Jealousy, selfishness, injustice, cruelty, ego truly;- 153 -

He has no need for faith who knows the uncreated, who has cut off rebirth, who has destroyed any opportunity for good or evil, and cast away all desire. He is indeed the ultimate man.

Beauty is an illusion, created by Mother Nature to drive the human species in the path of reproduction. In reality, beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.

Yes, a deep lesson from the postage stamp. It attaches itself to a moveable material, the envelope and gets going. A good relationship keeps you going forward; a bad one keeps you static. Attach yourself to someone who is also going forward and you will also get there.

We are taught to be free from all vices of life. No greed, anger, lust, and attachment with any mundane things.

To be free of insistence [free of forcing one's own opinion] is the path of Vitragta [attachment-free state, the enlightened one]. Quit insisting at all places. To even insist on the truth, God has considered it as ignorance. There is no insistence in ‘Us’ whatsoever!

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.)

God has said for us to know bad, as bad and good, as good. But while knowing the bad, there should not be the slightest abhorrence towards it and while knowing the good, there should not be slightest attachment towards it. Without knowing bad, as bad, the good cannot be known as good.

Attachment-abhorrence is the foundation for the worldly life and the foundation for ‘Knowledge’ is a state free of all attachments (vitragta).

My affection for you is not my problem.

Attachment is the source of pain, but detachment is the source of joy.

Fear creates attachment. Look around at the people and things you feel attached to; the people and things that you believe you can't live without. What is it that you are afraid of? Make it a goal to let go of attachment and, when you do, the fear will leave and unexpectedly beautiful things can come into its place. That is the reward for living in love and faith, instead of in fear.

When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.

From the dear comes grief; From the dear comes fear.If you're freed from the dear You'll have no grief, let alone fear.

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.

Compassion without discipline is egregious self-sabotage.

You can find hope in despair. Dwell on positive thoughts.

If a person were to get stuck in attachment induced entrancement for any worldly thing for just one hour, then it will last for a hundred years! Because of pleasure resulting effects and intents of engrossment, an indulging bad habit will last one day of Brahma (many many years), therefore it is not worth focusing our awareness anywhere (other than our true self, pure soul).

If giving my everything is what it takes, I won't hesitate, not for even a second. That's what it means to have something you'd give your life to keep safe.

It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.

Beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.

Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state ... Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.