Attachment, Fear, and Surrender (derived from a post to The Nonduality Salon email list) Melody: Though I can feel my 'self' loosening, it still has rather cherished values of 'compassion, service, 'brother's keeper'. Though this 'self' often fails to live up to those values, it still cherishes them nonetheless. I'm recognizing that it is this 'cherishing' that creates the resistance to "I AM".... even though my experience has shown me that in "I AM", all such fears are for naught. Bruce: Isn't "cherishing" another label for what others call "attachment?" Melody: Yes. :-) Bruce: Surely if the noted "values" truly abide, the ending of cherishing/attachment will not banish them, but rather enliven them in the moment, liberate them from mental enshrinement and bring them into the world as you. Melody: Without seeming to be berating myself...why is what you say 'not enough'? Bruce: Fear. Melody: If someone has tasted poison, and recognizes it as poison, doesn't a body wonder why they would 'choose' to continue to drink it? :-) Bruce: Sure, but fear is much more compelling than wonderment. It may well be "poison," but it's familiar poison, and thought clings to the familiar as fervently as it fears the unknown. Melody: It makes me wonder even more about Grace, and just how little my personal 'intent' and 'will' has to do with the surrendering of 'self'. Bruce: The dynamic that nurtures awareness is the spontaneous absence of "intent," "intent" being a movement of thought and therefore a perceptual lens. Again, "Not my 'will' but Thine" shines like a beacon! It is simultaneously the end of belief (cherishing!) and the ultimate act of faith (surrender!), the end of focus on the past and future and the emergence into the eternal now moment -- the one and only abode of that which theists call "God."