The Attachment Syndrome

A few years ago I came across an old proverb that said, “Strong attachments build strong prisons.”

It took a few years to find out what that meant, but eventually I did. It means that strong attachments to things of this world can delay our spiritual advancement by keeping our focus on the material rather than on the spiritual. Attachments are deeply embedded within our mental and emotional selves and become a primary part of our character and personality. However, as a student of Eckankar, I learned spiritual exercises that showed me how to free myself from the bonds of attachments and begin to understand the

meaning of spiritual freedom.

The concept of giving up attachments can be confusing if you don’t have an understanding of what it means. Eckankar teaches that it doesn’t mean giving up your family, your friends, your job or the things you like to do. It means giving up, or releasing yourself from the emotional and mental patterns that control your thoughts, your actions and your desires. I used the exercises to help me break free of anger,

one of the hardest attachments to break.

Attachments come from our past incarnations and will always be with us in some form or another, but that really isn’t the issue, it’s the ones that give us problems and cause disharmony in our lives. This is where the spiritual exercises of Eckankar come in. Success with the spiritual exercises simply depends on the willingness to do them for twenty to thirty minutes a day. You may never know exactly when an attachment, or habit, falls away, and then one day you realize there’s been a change in your life. It took me weeks before I realized I wasn’t as angry anymore, but I didn’t stop using the exercises; there was still a

long way to go - strong attachments accumulated over many lifetimes don’t go away in a few days.

Many people today realize that we are spiritual beings and there is a purpose to life. Our attachments act as adversaries to distract us and keep us from discovering that purpose. Overcoming our attachments and being completely free from entanglements in the mundane things of this world is the true meaning of spiritual freedom. As our attachments begin to fall away we get closer to our true self, and life takes on a

new meaning and becomes an enjoyable and exciting adventure.

Eckankar is The Path of Spiritual Freedom and the spiritual exercises are the key. They are here for all of us and many can be found in the book, The Spiritual Exercises of ECK, by Harold Klemp.