Knowing Really Helps: Cloud Talk and Preoccupied Attachment Theory

Happy Gray Days, Loved ones!

In case you can't tell, this was the sky Friday and the days shy of!
Its almost like an impenetrable blanket hiding the sun.

I actually really don't mind
the spontaneous dreariness.

Reminds me of my Northwest home.

And then makes me miss it.


Then I think about how much I simultaneously hated it once the few initial mystical months wore off.

---

  Weird how I look back on life with those rose colored lenses so easily--
not that this is the case always, or that I am in a place of wishing I was back there now,  or that I am always living in whatever "Glory days" I think I had,  but I do have my moments.  And those moments, I see are related to my ways of attaching in life.

I've been stewing in ideas around attachment
over the last two weeks.
Oh course the same weeks I boil in my own thoughts about relationships,
we would be going over Attachment Theory in Group Psych,
and Buddhism
and Taoism within World Religions! 
Religions all about
relinquishing desire,
impermanence,
and non-attachment!

So Attachment Theory:
An idea that says we all have our different ideas and manifestations on how relationships "should" function. and we cling to it.
I suppose this would be no different on how I also think life "should" function too.

The theory goes that humans there are 4 different forms of attachment, and we all have at least one of the three insecure forms of these, if not some form of each within various situations which come about in our life.

I wont go into them all right now, but Preoccupied attachment is the one that rings true for myself in most relational and life ideal scenarios:

- Constantly measuring what is with what was  (perceived positives and
    negatives)
- Frequently glorifying previous experiences/relationships
- Daydreaming about what was or even what wasn't
- "Checking the temperature" ,as my instructor would say, of the relationship or life situation continuously. (i.e. "Are you doing ok?" Are we doing ok?" Am I doing ok? "Am I good?" Am I bad? "Is he ok?"Are we ok?" How can I make this ok?" That! What I just did! That might make this not ok!")

See why preoccupied is appropriately titled?  :]
This way of attaching does not leave much for much else.

We miss the whole reality of what or who is actually at hand, and the majority of the other relationships and the Whole Manifest Reality itself through
lusting over losses and the fears that spring from losses,
doing mostly anything to chase after the preoccupation of our choice,
and not staying present with what is,
because what we think is, constantly overtakes the mind and therefore conducts the way we engage our relationships and our world.

I remember doing that for Seattle.

All the love for the mysterious dreary city still couldn't keep me from pining of the life I "wished I had" or  thought I "missed out on" or thought I "kept missing out on" .

And when I am somewhere else, I think of "how good I had it" in Sea-town.

I often want what I want, while I will often want something else.
Don't  get me started on how that and the temperature gaging seep out in actual relationships!

Oh Course  this book would find me this week!  If you see my posts on facebook, you will see I'm now preoccupied with Taosim.

Taoism brought me back to my spirit- embracing self over 2 years ago now, but studying more in depth has suctioned much of my internal world with my external experiences --- especially within these topics of attachment and preoccupation.

---

For instance...

Chasing after it all except It...

Later in the essay of the Wu Wei tale on Love, the Master gives a relational example of these principles from his former lover:

"It was Beauty, the earthly form of the formless Tao, calling up in you the rhythm of that movement by which you will enter into the Tao. You might have experienced the same at sight of a tree, a cloud, a flower. But because you are human, living by desire, therefore to you it could only be revealed through another human being, a woman--because, also, that form is to you more easily understood, and more familiar. And since desire did not allow the full upgrowth of a pure contemplation, therefore was the rhythm within you wrought up to be wild tempest, like a storm-thrashed sea that knows not whither it is tending. The inmost essence of the whole emotion was not 'love', but 'Tao'."

The things I busy myself with --distract myself with, desire--are only  facades of the truer impulse to be aware of my adsorption with what I am truly, and what extends to all beyond me-- 
the One.

I pray this be my only desire, if I can't overcome them all.

Yes, preoccupation is the warned against, but don't neglect your lover now!
The Master does not warn against the Tao within the form of love or,
luckily for us and the past few days, those clouds...

"And the souls of those who love are like two white clouds floating softly side by side, that vanish, wafted by the same wind, into the infinite blue of the heavens."

Waft with me, my friends?
Or at least keep reminding me to do so--
I might be preoccupied :P

xo