Welcome to this conversation

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Don’t Feed the Animals, Episode 2 (aired 9/18): Attachment If you love it or like it, why not have it? Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘have.’ If having means relationship, great. If it means possessing, then there is a problem. Something about having turns into attachment and the inability to let go. Think of Gollum muttering, “My Precious.” Attachment is an animal we mistakenly feed, and its clenched fists squeeze the life out of what we love. For a life that gives life, learn how to not feed this one.

This week: Attachment

Let’s play “Lifeboat!” List 5 objects, places, experiences or activities (not people) that you love. And listen for further instructions.

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We all have some animals that live inside us – that’s normal. These animals are feelings, reactions, and inclinations that we experience. That’s not a problem, the problem is the role that we let them play. Certain ones of these get triggered and instead of noting them as part of the landscape of our lives, we let them run our lives. That’s not what they are supposed to do.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the source of life.” Proverbs 4.23

When we let these animals get too big in our lives they begin to fill our hearts and we become what they are. 

Attachment is one of the animals in each of us. People experience the draw of connection and the fear of loss associated with it. 

  • How do these experiences feel in you? Physically? Emotionally?

In its place these feelings let us know that we value something or someone.

When we feed them they can turn into something ugly and dangerous.

  • How does this animal of attachment affect your relationships with things?

  • How does this animal of attachment affect your relationships with people?

Some truth telling from the Bible about the animal attachment.

“The love of money is a root of all sorts of bad stuff… In their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their trust in God and pierced themselves with many pains.” 1 Timothy 6.10

“Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing… For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” Jesus, Luke 12.22-23,34

If you aren’t going to feed the animal of attachment within you, what are you going to feed?

HINT: The opposite of the animal is seldom the answer. Don’t feed Detachment.

  • What feelings, reactions and inclinations are worthy of your heart, and therefore good to feed, to nurture? Make your own list.

A parable from a sutra attributed to Buddha that Greg thinks is about attachment. Enjoy the puzzling.

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Talk more about this with a group

Click HERE for a discussion guide.