christianity is the big attachment.

According to Anthony de Mello, attachments are “an emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or person you can not be happy.” (If you haven't heard of Anthony DeMello, google him right now, listen to whatever you can and buy one of his books (The Way to Love or Awareness) and then come back here.)

In other words, attachments are the belief that without something or some person, we can’t have what we really want: happiness.

de Mello, though, says that we are already happy. We can not attain happiness because we can not attain something we already have, it’s just that our mind is constantly creating unhappiness through its attachments. This follows most of good mystical teaching - we are good, the divine is here, we are free, we are light, etc… it’s not that there is something to find, it’s that there are things to unload to reveal the true state of ourselves and reality. Which is good. We don’t get to good, it is good (Julian of Norwich), and we have to unload the shit that hides it. (Also a great definition of sin.)

Side note: this is also the basis of meditation. Note your thoughts and feelings and let them go, coming back to the breath. We are not our thoughts and feelings and they are only distractions. You get it.

So, back to those attachments. They are the belief that without something we can’t be happy. Of course, the irony is that this belief causes us to not have the very thing that we are trying to get.

de Mello talks about two aspects to attachments: the positive and the negative. The positive is “the flash of pleasure and excitement - the thrill” - that comes when we get what we are attached to. Oh my god, I just got a thousand dollars! The negative is the sense of threat and tension that always accompanies the attachment. Oh shit what if I lose the money, don’t spend it correctly, someone takes it, or if I never make more money, or if…

These both, assume, that we actually get the attachment. Not getting the attachment of course has its own problems - we still want the thing that makes us happy and we can’t get it.

So to summarize. We’re already happy. But we have brains (and programming) that convince us that we need something to make us what we already are. We spend our lives desperate to get it/them and then if/when we do, it provides a temporary flash of pleasure and then the fear we will lose it…. not to mention that we usually have more than 1 of these - so just getting 1 isn’t enough. We need all kinds of them.

Struggle, fear, anxiety, unhappiness… all emerge from attachments.

So… how do we find true happiness? We drop the attachments. As de Mello says, again, “If you learn to enjoy the scent of a thousand flowers you will not cling to one or suffer when you can not get it. If you have a thousand favorite dishes the loss of one will go unnoticed and leave you happiness unimpaired. But it is precisely your attachments that prevent you from developing a wider and more varied taste for things and people.”

Now let’s bring this back around to Christianity… religion in general… but because I grew up in Christianity I can more safely talk about that one.

Christianity is the thing that blatantly says you can’t be happy without it. Not in this life or the next. Feel free to sub in Jesus and/or God and/or ““salvation” or whatever other words, but at its base, it says you can’t have the thing you are looking for until you get this thing or person or unless you walk with this thing or person. Now, as soon as you get this thing or person - assuming we can - we are instantly afraid of losing it. Oh crap, what if I piss off God? What if I lose Jesus? What if I don’t believe the right things? What if I don’t go to church?

We are also threatened by anyone or anything that might take our attachment and so like the man in the concentration camp who has just found food - another great de Mello example - he shoves the food in with one hand while holding out his other hand to prevent anyone from stealing his food. The image of most Christians - right? (especially evangelicals)

It makes so many things clear. If your god is an attachment then one will spend their whole life trying to find god, and when they do find god, will be terrified of losing god. Of course, most Christians don't talk this way blatantly but it’s in all the more subtle language… once saved always saved sounds good on paper but when “being saved” means acquiring something… well… you can always lose something that you’ve had to acquire, and thus, life becomes the fear and anxiety of losing it (careful of wrong belief) or someone taking it (careful of the world, the other religions, the enemy…) and it’s all such small thinking. One single flower.

Alright… so here’s where we’re at. We’re already happy. But, our mind tricks us (and has been programmed from years of propaganda) to make us believe we’re not but that we will be if we can get that thing or person. Unfortunately, this is the greatest trick the devil (or darkness or evil) ever played (it’s not convincing the world he/she doesn’t exist).

The greatest trick that darkness has ever pulled is convincing a bunch of people with 20/20 vision that they will never see unless they put on a blindfold and calling that blindfold Christianity.

So how do we find happiness? We drop attachments. We drop Christianity. As someone who has, let me tell you there’s a whole world of sight and freedom on the other side (along with more attachments but at least a big one is gone.)

When people continue to pull stats out about the “nones” - the nonreligious but spirtual - I get stoked. These are people who have dropped at least one major attachment.

All this to say. If you have family or friends who are still attached it helps to explain a lot of their behavior in regards to their faith. If you want to find freedom drop the Christianity thing. You’ll find Jesus and the other mystics with you.

And, most importantly, this is never some kind of brag thing - that’s the whole point in the beginning. We’re all the same, with all we need, it’s just that some of us have unloaded a bit more of the shit than others… help someone unload today… or you know… what’s that line… my burden is light (and always light)?

For more thoughts on the greatest trick the devil ever played read Insipid.