Bestselling author, Dr. Wayne Dyer said: “Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.”
Now in his new book, “The Five Levels of Attachment: Toltec Wisdom for the Modern World,” Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. explains how our attachments to thoughts, beliefs, identity and more, are creating our current reality.
“If my attachment to what I know blinds me to all the available options, then my knowledge is controlling me; it is controlling my intention, and it is creating my Personal Dream for me,” he says in the book. “But with awareness of my attachments comes the opportunity to take back that control and to live as I choose.”
Throughout our lives, we have formed beliefs based on our own experiences, as well as what we learn through others. These beliefs create the reality we experience, and we become attached to that reality – whether it’s our own identity, the city we live in or the car we drive. In the book, Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. guides the reader toward an understanding of how they developed their current beliefs, and how by re-evaluating them, a new life can emerge.
“When I believe something must stay in its rightful place, exactly as it is, for me to be O.K., I have become attached to it. I have confused this external thing with who I am,” he says in the book.
There are five levels of attachment introduced in the book so readers can evaluate how attached they are to different aspects of their lives – with the first being little to no attachment to the fifth being fully attached. These are:
The Authentic Self
Preference
Identity
Internalization
Fanaticism
Just as we have formed attachments to beliefs, things and situations, we have the same power to break these attachments through awareness, and a process Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. calls “redirection.” No matter what level our attachment may be, he offers a map to move down the line to detaching. It starts with recognizing where we are, and making a choice to change.