Attachment

So, I've been practicing yoga for a long time, almost 15 years, and the idea of attachment came up when I first started it. It, of course, hadn't been a concept I'd ever given any thought but once I heard about it I immediately looked into it and realized that I had it! lol, we all do, we're in bodies, we convince ourselves the bodies are going to last forever, our first attachment, and then decide that everything else must last just as long or we'd be upset for losing something.

Just yesterday I put five boxes of books and two tubs of comics into a garage sale my sister is having at my grandma's house and once we loaded the stuff and she left I felt a pang of loss, but was like, oh that's good. I need to unload some more stuff. Not sure what else that would mean.

This morning I get a text that one guy came and bought all of my comics in one fell swoop! And I felt the worst icky feeling in my tummy and realized how attached I had been to those things.

I started collecting comics in 1975 when my grandpa bought me a $.35 issue of Spider-Woman and from then on I was obsessed. Especially with the X-Men and anything related to that franchise. The X-Men being outcasts because they were mutants and I always felt like I never fit in, so identified with them immediately. I continued collecting regularly until say 1989 and then until a few years ago would buy the occasional issue here and there. But it was a big part of my life for a long time and I've now got none of it physically anymore.

Does that really matter? Probably not. I have the lessons learned from the storylines, I have the memories of the stories and characters that will live with me forever. I had some original issues of many things but really, does it matter? Nah.

So, even though right now, today (maybe even tomorrow) I've got this empty sensation in my gut, even in my heart, I'll be fine. I'd not looked at some of them for decades until recently when I got them to my place from storage at my moms house and I'd lived just fine without them all those years, I'll live just fine without them in the future as well.

Yogis in India typically own nothing, and the things that they do have will give away at the drop of a hat. Staying so unattached that they don't even have a place they live in but are always traveling, forcing detachment.

I'm not quite there and may never be, and don't know if I aspire to be that way, but I love the idea of the freedom it seems to give you. So, I'll just work toward that feeling of freedom and not worry about letting go of the things until it comes up and deal with it then. I've let go of lots of stuff since beginning yoga and the things I have right now I may let go of in the future, I'm okay with where I am and not in a hurry to push things out the door though, but to just allow the need for them to leave when it does.

What are you attached to?