MOVING PAST

It seems that some people try to move past things (to remove something from their lives that they used to be obsessed with) by learning to hate it. I feel that this is a cheap fix and a terrible mistake. To move past something, one must learn to become unattached to it. To hate something that you used to like does not sever this attachment - it is simply a different manifestation of an ongoing problem. If attachment is like a hinge, then all that has been done is that it has been swung into a different direction, but not detached.

The easiest example is a romantic relationship in which the couple modulate back and forth between love and hate for each other. Even when they are in the stage where they hate one another - their lives are still connected with an attachment. Instead of obsessing about their love, they obsess about their hate. In these type of situations, the hate is more likely to swing back to love - for the two of them are not moving on. Even if they try a new relationship with someone else - it is compared to, or done in spite over the last one (to cause jealousy or to rub in the others face).

I see it often in recovery rooms - the ones that stand up a rage aloud over how much the hate alcohol and drugs now are MORE likely to relapse. They have not moved on, they are still attached. They are still obsessed with their addiction - it has just now swung towards hate.
For others the remaining attachment may not be based on hate, but on overpowering fear.

In early recovery I can understand how this may be one of the only effective tools that one is able to use for a time (and should be used - staying abstinent is a must). But as time goes on and one has a better sense of what true recovery really is about (developed better self-awareness, methods, tools, ect) - this cheap fix then MUST be shed. To maintain its use can only hold one back from truly moving on, past what used to destroy you.

This does not mean that one should not have a healthy aversion (not wanting to go back to), or fear/respect for what one is moving past. But, it should not be a crippling, obsessive, dominating force that continues to haunt one and limit’s the ability to find the true freedom of a new life. To break attachments diminishes continued suffering and leads to more serenity.