Love and Attachment
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“Love and Attachment #1”

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Looking back at 2019, a definite highpoint for me was the summer retreat I attended in July. One week of yoga, meditation and tantra, beautifully enhanced by the liberal amounts of lounging about with like-minded folk in the Somerset sunshine. Singing in the hot-tub was a highlight. Equally memorable were the daily doses of ‘to-die-for’ gluten-free, sugar-free cake. But the thing that was most inspiring and enduring was the learning I experienced around love and attachment.

Godly attributes

The focus of the retreat, organised by Tara Yoga Centre, was on what they call the ‘Godly attributes’ – those innate virtues that we all apparently have inside us but are not necessarily experiencing all of the time. Now this idea was not new to me but there’s nothing like a week-long, in-depth immersion to bring on a dramatic shift in one’s perspective and experience. So what are these divine qualities that we all share?

The book, ‘Conversations with God’ by Neale Donald Walsch, puts it beautifully:

“You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light. You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in times of confusion. You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth, the greatest peace and the grandest love. You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself as these things. Choose now to know yourself as these things always.”

Love and Attachment

What made the retreat powerful was: 1) having daily reminders of these highest human qualities through the morning lectures, 2) deepening our experience of these through extended sessions of yoga and meditation, and 3) having opportunities to practise relating to others from these highest qualities over the course of the week. And I found that the insights that had been germinating beneath the surface for months, regarding love and attachment, were now beginning to bloom.

Love and Attachment

Insights & inspiration:

1. Love and attachment are not the same thing

Love and Attachment

The first thing to say here is that love and attachment are two different things that often get confused. We can love someone without attachment, and we can be attached to someone without experiencing love. We can also love someone with attachment – probably the most common experience in intimate relationships. Developmental psychologists say that being able to form a loving bond with someone is essential to our emotional development. I’m not arguing with that. What I’m talking about here, though, is the unhealthy type of attachment, the ‘over-attachment’ that can make relationships difficult.

2. Love is our essential nature

Love and Attachment

For decades now, pop songs have been teaching us that love is blind, fickle, elusive and unreliable – somewhere out there, and out of reach. If true, this leaves us hugely vulnerable to being hurt by love or doomed to never experience it. Many spiritual paths and religions, on the other hand, teach us that love is an innate human quality, an inner reflection – if you like – of God’s love or universal love.

I have come to believe that love is our essential nature because of my own experience. Some of my most powerful spiritual experiences – through meditation and chanting, primarily – have been what I can only describe as an overwhelming feeling of love and happiness, something I connect with by going deeper into myself and that exists entirely independently of any external circumstance.

“Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.”

Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch.

When spiritual experience demonstrates the intrinsic and expansive nature of love, it frees us from having to endlessly seek it outside of ourselves. If we already have love within us, then we can easily experience love without needing to get it from others.

3. Our beloved is the inspiration not the source

Love and Attachment

One of the shifts in perspective that I experienced on my retreat was to see the other person – the object of my affections – not as the source of the love I was feeling but the inspiration. They were inspiring me to feel more love! This is a game-changer for intimate relationships. It helps remove the neediness and dependency that usually accompany attachment. We don’t have to be eternally waiting, needing to receive love from the other … love is already here and immediately available to us. And because we are all unique there will always be people who inspire that love in us more than others. That’s natural and beautiful.

4. Abundance, not lack:

It is also worth remembering that while our time and energy may be limited, there is no limit to the amount of love we can give, feel and experience. It costs nothing to give, it is zero-calorie and fat-free, and never runs out. If we can regularly remind ourselves and reconnect to our inner reserves of love and happiness through meditation, or whatever practice works for you, we will be approaching relationships from a place of abundance not lack. We are likely to be less desperate and more discerning too, with that baseline of love and happiness already installed in us. This, in turn, puts much less pressure on our partners or new prospects to fix or feed us with their love.

5. Gratitude, not expectation:

Love and Attachment

Love is not always convenient, practical or well-timed. Sometimes it’s not possible to pursue a loving connection. There can be obstacles, uncertainty, vulnerability. Other times we have to sit with certain needs not being met in a relationship. What I’m learning is that it’s our expectations that often make us suffer. Expectation keeps us in a state of attachment – where our happiness depends on a particular person or outcome, where we are continually waiting and wanting something or someone that isn’t there.

Gratitude, on the other hand, keeps bringing us back to love. Gratitude engenders love! Try it, and you’ll see. Focus, for one week, on all the things you love and appreciate about your partner and see how it makes you feel. I’m learning to be grateful for what I do have, in life and love, for what is there, for what does work and for all of my experiences. Gratitude enables us to change our expectations to fit the one we love instead of trying to change the one we love to fit our expectations.

Seeing the bigger picture

One thing that can help us cultivate this state of gratitude is to try and stay connected to the bigger picture. Remembering, for example, that our lives are ultimately enriched by our loving connections and experiences with others – regardless of what form they take, how perfect or imperfect they are, and how long they last.

As Alfred Lord Tennyson said in his poem: “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”

Or, in the words of Eden Ahbez who wrote ‘Nature Boy’, the stunning song made famous by Nat King Cole:

“The greatest thing,

You’ll ever learn,

Is just to love,

And be loved in return.”

In closing

I dedicate this post to Marilena Frangi, Foca Yariv and all the teachers at Tara Yoga Centre who have guided and inspired me over the past two years, on my journey through yoga, meditation and tantra. I will be continuing to explore this theme in my next post. Feel free to share your own insights and inspiration in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post – please give it some gold stars above or post a comment below. Thank you!

Yoga and meditation

Part 2 of ‘LOVE AND ATTACHMENT has now been published!

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20 Comments

  • SUSAN SEABROOK

    9th May 2020 at 10:56 am Reply

    Very insightful Tracy. I enjoyed reading it. It is very important to appreciate and love what you have in life and be at peace with yourself.

  • Josie Kattenbeck

    10th May 2020 at 8:13 pm Reply

    Thank you Tracy for making me think about love in a different way. Really interesting and thought provoking.

  • Lilith Perkins

    13th May 2020 at 1:30 pm Reply

    I enjoyed reading your blog as always and found the perspective of separating love and attachment interesting. I assume you’re talking primarily about romantic love and I was curious what your thoughts are regarding whether the same applies to other kinds of love, e.g. love for parents, children, siblings, friends etc.

    • Tracy Starreveld

      2nd July 2020 at 10:50 pm Reply

      Hi Lilith,

      Thanks for your lovely comment and very good question!

      All I can do is offer my thoughts on it for now, and invite others to also share their perspectives, if they would like to contribute.

      I think we can apply non-attachment to all types of relationships, ie: not just romantic ones. It would likely be far harder and more complex with family members, though, because of the high level of emotional ‘entanglement’ we all generally experience there. Hardest of all would probably be between parents and children. There is the issue of dependency vs independence, of course. If non-attachment (as I discuss in part 2 of this post) is about emotional independence, freedom and resilience, then it goes without saying that a child cannot practise non-attachment, unless you’ve given birth to a little Buddha!

      An emotionally mature adult could start practising non-attachment with their own parents or children, but I think this would be very tough without the support of something like meditation, mindfulness or therapy. It would require a high level of awareness and resilience in oneself. Not impossible but definitely challenging!

      In the process of writing these posts I have begun to apply these ideas to my relationship with my father. Even though he passed away several years ago, it’s already proving quite illuminating.

      Huge topic! Maybe I’ll write a blog about it sometime!
      Thanks for chipping in : )

  • raphael

    17th May 2020 at 1:01 pm Reply

    I have enjoyed reading your blog very much even if I don’t agree with everything you said. I mostly agree though especially with the expectations bit and how important it is to be grateful for and notice what we already have. There is also a big link to make between love and sacrifice. It is easy to be loving when we feel like it, it is another story to do it in more difficult, challenging times especially when we don’t feel like it. That’s when qualities/virtues come into play such as having the endurance, the patience, the inner strength, the diligence, the courage, the flexibility, the generosity, the kindness – to love! For me love can mainly be manifested through the practice of qualities and virtues. It is for all of us to manifest those so that we can all experience a more divine connection.

  • Anne

    17th May 2020 at 1:26 pm Reply

    Loved reading this post Tracy. It was refreshing to read your thoughts on attachment from a spiritual perspective, one that resonates for me as well. Similar discussion albeit more psychological in ‘Attached’ by Rachel S.F. Feller and Amir Levine. I agree completely regarding expectations too. We are conditioned in so many ways by what surrounds us in society in ways of songs, movies, products to not only attach codependently but have such high expectations that cannot be met by one person. I look forward to your next post and will read your others. Anne x

  • Sebi Black

    19th May 2020 at 4:34 pm Reply

    Love can be such a misunderstood word, especially in our culture where the emphasis is often on conditional love that comes with expectations and disappointments. Learning to love oneself and look after oneself should be talked about more and taught in school. Much heartbreak, hatred, addictions, greed, etc would be avoided if people learned to give themselves what they need. It is great that you are exploring and developing this topic. It is ok to want love and grieve it when it is not available and to be able to give ourselves compassion and soothing, and wise to appreciate what we already have.

  • Tomas

    24th May 2020 at 10:32 pm Reply

    Tracy, your words touched me deeply in my heart. You captured the true essence of our existence and purpose. It is indeed sometimes easy to miss the difference between attachment and unconditional love. But once uncovered and embraced, it unleashes the path towards inner joy and fulfilment. Looking forward to your next post.

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