“Love and attachment are not the same thing…
Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you. Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires.
Love imposes no demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelm
ing demand — ‘Make me feel whole.’
Love expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.
Most of us would not automatically make these distinctions, because attachment is something we need. But a relationship based upon need is really just expanded ego. Being able to fuse your ego with someone else’s brings a sense of security; it justifies being selfish because the selfishness is shared. ‘We’ have our ways of doing things, our likes and dislikes, our sense of being set apart from others. At its most extreme there is a kind of mutual madness – folie a deux- in which two people try to possess each other body and soul. A wild love affair is the closest most people come to this extreme. In ordinary relationships attachment seems normal…
The question, then, is how to preserve the devotion and faithfulness of marriage without giving in to neediness and attachment. What is required is a state called non-attachment. The word sounds like a synonym for detachment, implying indifference, but non-attachment is actually a state of freedom that preserves and even increases your love for another. Detachment is achieved by not caring; non-attachment is achieved by allowing, which shows tremendous care. Therefore, the insights that apply to non-attachment carry us deeper into the spiritual importance of letting go.
Attachment is a form of dependency based on ego; love is non-attachment based on spirit.
The more non-attached you are, the more you can truly love.
Action that does not bind comes directly from love; all other action comes indirectly from the past.
Struggling with karma will not free you from its binding influence. Freedom can only be achieved by remembering who you really are.
Who you really are is unbounded spirit, beyond the reach of karma.”
The Path To Love, Deepak Chopra, pg. 190-192.
