Attachment and detachment

What does it feel like when we’re deciding who or what to respect, deciding when to trash things, deciding when something’s no longer useful? From love and attraction we move through to no-longer-wanting and no-longer-loving, like the things we have or the companion animals we have or one another we have. And sometimes we consider abandoning them. But whether it’s junk, friends, memories or houses, they each have power. They can each benefit us and they can each bring us down.
In order to stabilise our relationships we only need to drop all semblance of a disrespectful attitude. Between one another (or at least between us and animate beings like dogs and cats) disrespect is less likely to appear. We prefer to be near them, to be close and happy around them. We value their loyalty, affection and caring qualities, and isn’t that why we are caring and affectionate towards them? But with the less dear or less near we don’t always act so honourably. That homeless man we ignored or that animal we ate, that’s where we’re sorely tested. We say: “How can they possibly hurt me if I hurt them? They have no power or hold over me”. We show respect to our companion animals, to our family, but less to a stranger and even less to the animal we (de facto) kill. We show even less respect to the inanimate.
The shift that is taking place now seems to be moving away from dominance and power and force to a subtler, gentler intercourse between ourselves and our world. By showing kindness, compassion, acting altruistically we won’t earn any haloes but we might discover the slender route through to a whole new way of going about our business. It’s the shift of a ‘conceptual framework’, consistent within itself and only open to revision when evidence dictates. The closer we get ‘into’ it the wider the world of possibilities opens.