Walking Without Attachment

Be here without attachment. Be here without attachment. Be here without attachment…

I’ve discovered one of the most difficult activities I have ever undertaken: walking without attachment.

Try clearing your mind and taking a walk of any length. I walk a bunch every day. I’ve tried this clear-minded walking. It ain’t easy! Sounds simple enough, though, no? Clear mind…no attachment. Walk.

Unfortunately, the state of mind doesn’t last long.

Apparently, our brains love to work at maximum overdrive. They like to label things. The like to measure things. They like to categorize things. They like to predict things. They like to yell at people at whom they’re mad. They like to think about all the bad things that could happen at that particular moment in time. They like to think about all the bad things that can happen to your kids, your spouse, your parents…anyone you know…at that particular moment in time. They like to imagine the most inane, irrelevant, and outlandish things they can possibly conjure. If all else fails, there’s the list of things that are so very, very wrong about you and everything you do.

Our brains, it turns out, don’t like to be silent.

And that is where the soul comes in. Rather, that is where our souls, our spirits, need to come in. Our souls like silence. They like tranquility. They like peace. They like harmony. They like to find stillness and open themselves up to the world around them. They like to take in the sights. They like to appreciate without categorizing. They like to love without expecting anything in return. They like the sounds and smells and feel of everything within the realm of our senses and beyond. If all else fails, there’s the singular, indescribable sensation of becoming connected to the entirety of the Universe.

Our souls, it turns out, are the very essence of silence.

That’s the human struggle, the daily challenge: to balance the necessary work of our brains with the essential silence of our souls. I suspect that the vast majority of human beings, past and present, don’t have a problem with too much silence in our lives. I suspect most suffer from too much brain work. I know I do.

That is why my new favorite activity is to walk without attachment. Every day, it is a challenge to take one more step than the day prior before the voice of my busy brain jumps back into the forefront. The jabbering becomes the default state at some point in our cognitive development. I don’t think it ever shuts up. If you live to be 70, 80, 90, or well past 100, I suspect that voice will never, ever go away. But that does not mean that we cannot train our brains to be silent and to take the back seat, allowing our greater, connected consciousness…our true consciousness…to fill up the space. For me, the training begins each day as I walk without attachment.

Try it. It seems impossible, but perfection isn’t the objective. The objective is to simply achieve a few seconds of clarity, here and there, throughout the day. Just a few seconds of silence…

and a few more…

and a few more…

each day…

walking without attachment.