“Honey, you ever seen a U-Haul truck pull up with the Hearse?”

If there were one item you could take with you when you pass on, what would it be?

My dear and gracious friend “Aunt Gert” said many times, “Honey, you ever seen a U-Haul truck pull up with the Hearse?” You cannot take it with you! “An attachment, writes Anthony De Mello in Awareness, is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy. Once you get convinced of that—and it gets into our subconscious, it gets stamped into the roots of our being—you are finished.”

While you are alive, attachments, whether to material items or social values, may make you feel safe and comfortable, yet they limit your enjoyment of new experiences in the present moment. In A New Earth Eckhart Tolle reprimands us, “Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease.”

Do you seek security through an attachment to your home? Your ethnic group? Your denomination? Your job title?

The decision to be content with only the material world or to strive after the spiritual world is always your choice. Do you have a staunch attachment to some belief that prevents you from manifesting your courage? Do you hover in scarcity mentality and unconsciously stay attached to the almighty pay check while your dreams wither for lack of spiritual nourishment? Are you willing to let go of your possessive attitude toward everything? What do you pine for?

Try making a list of the things to which you are attached. Review your list and assess where and how these attachments found a home in your psyche. Stopping your attachment and learning to become indifferent to the outcome should not be confused with loss of spirit or passion. Spirit and passion remain constant. Saint Teresa discovered that attachments “are an expression of an inner hunger.” Tolle continues, “Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.” Non-attachment centers you in Being and all its daily joy.

Make courage your daily legacy.