Why our Attachments Keep us Enslaved

While we may state that we want to be left alone, in peace, to be empowered to create the lives that we choose, and that we consciously strive to individuate from the collective unconscious with shadow work and raising self-awareness, there still seems to be something getting in the way of our freedom and sovereignty.  We think that we may have discovered “why”, and it relates to our attachments, and how they are keeping us perpetuating self-deceptive logic.

On one layer of belief, we avoid fully individuating from the collective unconscious because of our fear of what they might do to us should we not be enmeshed to them. Therefore we stay enmeshed because we believe that we then have some control over their behaviors, even if it is through our resisting their unhealthy actions. As an unfortunate side effect of this attempt to control our external environment/people through enmeshment, we stay susceptible to their impulsive behaviors — we make ourselves unsafe from them because we’re staying enmeshed to keep ourselves safe from them. Once we stop trying to control their behaviors, and let go of our belief that we can keep ourselves safe through staying enmeshed, we can more easily individuate from them, and finally experience the fruits of our labor — free from the threat of their external control.

This belief pattern is what keeps us in “what, how, why” rather than “what, why, how”, as we consistently keep one hand on the “how”, and juggle the “what” and “why” with the other hand. Instead, we need to keep one hand on “what” and the other on “why”, which will allow for “how” to come back to us easily and effortlessly in a perpetual cycle; but it is our attachment to “how” we want it to look that makes it impossible to attain without manipulating the being that we feel should provide it to us.  We think that our “how” is to resist their impulsivity, while their “how” is to act impulsively, meaning that neither of us are able to act spontaneously, which is the result of relating to the Trivium method in the correct order of “what, why, how”.  This is true in our micro personal relationships, as well as our macro group relationships, but there is a deeper layer to consider.

resistance-impulsive-sad-spontaneous-joy

On the ‘Duality to Unity Feelings Wheel’, Impulsive and Resistance are the duality counterparts of the unity experience of spontaneity. Click the picture to learn more about ‘Duality to Unity Feelings Wheel’.

For example in the micro, if a woman has a belief about “how” her lover should behave towards her, he will resist giving this to her because she has enmeshed to him in order to place her expectations upon him. In this pattern she is disrespecting his free will by enmeshing to him, and then acting impulsively to control the outcome, which causes him to resist her control. He will then do actions that are impulsive that damage her image of how she thinks it should be, causing her to resist his actions too. The first cause is not her lover’s impulsive and poor actions, but her enmeshing to him to place her controlling expectations upon him. This means that her lover’s impulsive actions are actually an effect of her wrong thinking and choice to enmesh, and not the cause of her lack of safety within the relationship.  Now he is a resonating match to this pattern, as he must also have this pattern in other aspects of his life, otherwise she could not enmesh to him in the first place.

In another example in the macro, if a man has the belief about “how” his government should look and behave in relationship to him, he must enmesh to the government and impulsively send out his expectations of “how” the government collective should behave, causing the government to resist his “how”. Since this controlling dynamic is in place, the government will start doing impulsive actions that violate his image of “how” his government should behave, causing him to resist his government’s behavior. The first cause is not the government’s impulsive actions, but rather his enmeshment and controlling expectations that he is placing upon the government. This means that the government’s impulsive actions are actually an effect of his wrong thinking and choice to enmesh, and not the cause of his lack of safety within society.  Now the government is also a resonating match to this pattern, as it must also have this pattern in other aspects of its existance, otherwise he could not enmesh to it in the first place.

In a sense, we avoid individuating from the collective, from the government, from our family, and from our lover’s, because we perceive their behavior as the cause of our pain, but in fact, it is our expectations that we place upon them that are the actual cause, and their behavior, and our subsequent resistance to their behavior, that is the effect. This is the logical fallacy of ignoring a common cause, where “A and B are regularly connected (but no third, common cause is looked for), therefore A is the cause of B”. This then places us into the negative feedback loop of the circular reasoning fallacy, where we reason that if only they would stop behaving badly then we would feel safe, therefore we must stay vigilant to prevent them from behaving badly, and judge or shame them, so that they will not act badly, and then we will finally feel safe.

When it comes down to it though, we do not individuate from our enmeshed realities because we are afraid of who they will be and what they will do if they were allowed to be an individual; we are not respecting their free will, which places us in danger of having our free will violated. Additionally, we’re afraid of our own ability to create apart from them, and do not trust that we can experience the lives we desire without enmeshing to them, and then attempting to control them by passing our expectations along to them — to ensure that we receive what we desire. If we truly respected their free will, we would take a step back and empower them to live how they choose to live, trust their ability to create free from our interference, which would demonstrate our trust in our own ability to create the lives we desire.

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