Clinging & Avoidance

Clinging & Avoidance Work

“Any time we admit a difficult truth, any time we face that which we have been afraid to face, any time we acknowledge, to ourselves or to others, facts the existence of which we have been evading, any time we are willing to tolerate temporary fear or anxiety on the path to better contact with reality, our self-esteem increases.” ~ Nathaniel Branden

On the path of self-awareness, we come to a point where the journey would benefit from a deep-dive in answering the question, to what am I clinging to and what am I avoiding? Clinging and avoidance are at the core of suffering, and their resolution the core of a Self-responsible, happy life.

To explore how clinging and avoidance work can be helpful in expanding your inner-work and accelerate your spiritual/personal growth, let’s start with the concept of clinging.

Clinging

Clinging is about maintaining what you have. It is being attached to something outside of what you have control over.

The things we cling to are also called “attachments” in spiritual teachings so I will be using these terms interchangeably in this writing. In Zen Buddhism, and according to the Pali Buddhist Dictionary, a definition of upàdàna: ‘clinging’, is an intensified degree of craving. The four kinds of clinging the Buddha taught are:

1. sensuous clinging (kàmupàdàna)

2. clinging to views (diññhupàdàna)

3. clinging to mere rules and ritual (sãlabbatupàdàna) and

4. clinging to the personality-belief known as ego (atta-vàdupàdàna).

It’s important to consider these different aspects of clinging when attempting to discover what form of clinging is creating your suffering.

The “craving” mentioned above is the same word the Buddha used in his second Noble Truth, recognizing it as a root of suffering. So he recognized attachment as a cause of great difficulty for us. But in terms of explaining upàdàna, we can also use the more simplified definition where a literal meaning of upàdàna is “fuel.” In this definition, we can say attaching or clinging to something provides fuel for greed, hatred, and delusion, which is to say its once innocent yearnings eventually fuels the creation of negativity which leads to suffering.

To cling is to deny the reality of impermanence. More importantly, that the reality of impermanence is a gift and not something to be resisted. Just imagine if you had to eat (only) your favorite food at every meal for an entire lifetime. You soon would wish this situation weren’t permanent so that you could experience what not eating your favorite food would be like. It’s only your favorite food because it is somewhat rare and is experienced in contrast with other meals that aren’t completely your favorite. Like a kiss that is delightful because it has a beginning and an end, impermanence is the mechanism of contrast that drives desire and the evolution of consciousness.

Clinging says, “My happiness depends on this so I will attempt to control for this so that it never changes.” And then when it inevitably changes, it disrupts our happiness as well as corrupting the positive ways we relate to ourselves or to the world around us. Clinging to anything rejects the gift of impermanence and denies the truth that real happiness comes from within and isn’t largely dependent on the perfection of external circumstances. We desire more of the same, and we get attached to whether or not the outcome we desire comes manifest—not realizing a different outcome than what we’re clinging to is just the thing that will serve the growth of our greatest good.

Attachment is a form of identification, which as soon as we participate in, we become a more separate and small self that, by the very nature of the structure will naturally be more prone to victimhood suffering. A self that is more vulnerable, needy, and insecure. Clinging to attachments often stems from the lack of recognizing that at the highest level, everything is one Self and thus nothing can truly be lost eternally. We instead operate under a premise of fear that “self” can be lost, which can only be true if you are completely identified as your ego-self. This self, instead of loosening it’s grip on control, seeks to grasp more tightly from fear of change and loss.

This is also objectification. Instead of identifying as the True Self (formless soul), the “witness” who observes all objects, you become fused with the lesser option—the false self of the “object” (form). The object here is your material-self, which is “real” but is only temporary, along with all percieved threats that happen to that self—called your life situation. Identification at the material level means a disconnection from being able to access your higher self and its reasonings, along with its transcendent relationship to all form, which embraces impermanence as a delight rather than a curse. 

Living in our True Self means we stop resisting the way things are, and then we act in the world without tying everything back to our sense of self and its fearful biases.

Our ego-identities are fragile and are constantly on the defensive to protect a story of its self-concept. It is very attached to not appearing to others in ways that would make it seem inferior when compared to others, and is threatened by anyone or anything that could suggest it. We get emotional when the ego believes someone thinks we’re stupid, ignorant, incompetent, misinformed and the like as our ego feels less-than in its attempts to manage the reputation. We cling to being seen as smart, informed, competent, etc. regardless of whether or not we actually are these things. If someone demonstrates they believe such challenging things about us, our ego perceives this as damage and seeks to compensate for it through retaliation—attempting to correct the error by proving them wrong (attack). We get lost in warring reactivity, in the ego’s small-self concept story, and we become the object rather than the observing subject.

In meditation, when we let go off all thoughts and emotions, we can dissolve the subject/object relationship and just exist. Objects are no longer differentiated from ourselves, and the fuel of clinging is extinguished. Still, in the next moment after meditation we may experience a ‘re-ignition’, but we can loosen attachment’s grip over us by receiving, and letting go, over and over again. This is found in the power of a daily mindfulness practice and is something we must do intentionally.

Though, letting go of the things you cling to can be challenging. After all, we cling to things that we have made our conceptual identity, our small ego-self, out of and letting them go is a threat to that smaller self’s security blanket. You have to be willing to face your fears and confront the truths that make up the quilted squares of the blanket your ego has used to comfort itself over a lifetime.

So our endeavor with ending clinging is to meet life’s dramas as just another impermanent part of ourselves (illusion), rather than objects which we either grasp, avoid, or ignore. We seek to meet everything as Self as opposed to “fuel” for our desires and cravings. Living this way, our lives become lives guided by presence, by non-attachment, by non-clinging.  A life of non-clinging does not imply aloofness but rather seeks to reduce objectification.

By reducing the objectification of life and self, you can live in the peaceful security of a higher truth that all aspects of True Self are eternal. All essence is real and is what lies behind the dance of form. That all things that are real are permanent and can never end. All things that are illusory, including all pain and suffering, are impermanent and shall pass.

Avoidance

Avoidance is a form of resistance, which often is connected to a negative emotion/energy such as fear, anxiety, or sadness. We avoid what we are uncomfortable confronting due to various possible factors, which are often habitual, and are thus below our conscious awareness. We often avoid important things and choose to occupy our time with unimportant things that fill our sense of ‘doing,’ which plays into our living a smaller, safer life than what we would otherwise consciously choose.

Procrastinating doing what’s not fun for the sake of doing something more pleasurable is one way we get into avoidance. When we are living at a lower-level of conscious awareness, our Default Mode Network (monkey mind) is helping make choices for us—making us unhappy and even depressed.

We avoid the focus required for a more intentional life and instead do things like the following examples:

• Check messages, news, feeds, notifications … to avoid facing what we don’t want to face.

• When facing difficulties in life, we pacify ourselves through justification or blame, or get busy with some activity or numbing agent (like alcohol) so we don’t have to take responsibility.

• When an undesirable responsibility comes up, our reaction is to want to go do something else or to put it off instead of acknowledging our true feelings/thoughts about it.

• Put off paying bills, doing taxes, dealing with long emails, or managing clutter because our downtime isn’t replenishing and thus we feel the urge for more instead of doing the hard thing.

• We put off exercise because it’s uncomfortable.

• We don’t meditate again because it doesn’t seem ‘productive.’

There are thousands more examples occurring in our lives every day that we don’t even notice, because our monkey mind will switch to thinking about something else without our awareness. Resistance-avoiding something that embodies temporary pain and discomfort is a direct route to prolonged suffering. It’s impossible to resist doing the things in your life that require your responsible action forever, and the longer you resist the longer you have that incomplete energy taking up the space your inner-peace could be occupying. A better strategy is to train your mind to face your avoidances sooner than later.

Try this right now: pause for a minute and think about what difficulty you’re avoiding thinking about right now. You will either notice a difficulty you don’t like, or your mind will quickly turn to doing something else before the minute is even up. This is a result of the habitual monkey mind.

But avoidance isn’t only about not doing things; its also about not seeing things.

Avoidance says, “I don’t like this (fill in the blank) and instead of engaging with it I will hide from it, or hide it from me.” That hiding can rob you of years of growth because those things that would better be challenged go unchallenged and the wisdom and peace that awaits you on the other side of resolution never gets actualized. We often do this with our own personalities, with our close relationships, and our professional dynamics.

Within you now is your shadow, or pain body as Eckhart Tolle calls it. Your shadow is composed of multiple aspects of yourself that are ‘disowned’ or repressed from times in your life where these aspects were not loveable or acceptable to yourself or those who took care of you. These aspects are connected to things you judge so harshly in others and are triggered within yourself seemingly without obvious reasons. These unintegrated facets of your reality are waiting for you to let time run out on your avoidance so that they can be brought into the light of your compassionate awareness. When you do, you will become free from your judging mind—the heightened way of relating to the world and the Self your soul has been longing for.

What important conversations are you avoiding having from fear of the “what ifs”?

What important confrontations and boundary settings are you avoiding from the fear of disappointing or hurting someone?

What behaviors are you avoiding admitting to yourself aren’t creating the experiences you desire in your life?

Watch for your judgement triggers when navigating the world of humans and instead of avoiding yourself by projecting outward onto undeserving others, learn to find and embrace the ‘self-aspect’ shadow that has avoided being known and compassionately loved.

To end avoidance, learn to embrace what seems uncomfortable knowing overcoming this short-term discomfort leads to long-term happiness.

The sooner you take the curative medicine that discomfort has to offer you, the sooner you will climb to greater levels of peace and happiness, and the greater that peace and happiness will be.