# attachment style good little read



## branl (May 21, 2010)

As Tibetan Dzogchen teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche states, "There are two types of mindfulness: deliberate and effortless." (Urgyen, 2009, p. 109). Even though he says that our natural state is effortless mindfulness, most people need an intentional reminder to bring us back to this. "Because we have been carried away from the natural state by conceptual thinking since beginningless lifetimes, we will again and again be swept away by the strength of habit." (Urgyen, 2009, p. 114). Tibetan Buddhism teaches that for most people, the mindfulness of deliberate attention is essential in the beginning. It is recommended that one practice deliberate mindfulness, even though it is subtly conceptual, and gradually progress to effortless mindfulness. However, in the direct, nondual teachings of many current nondual teachers, effortless mindfulness is pointed to directly. Either way, ultimately it is the effortless resting as nondual awareness that is pointed to. This can also be described as the difference between a dualistic practice of mindfulness, which involves a subject and an object, and a nondual practice that does not involve subject and object. Nondual mindfulness is simply resting as nondual awareness with no one resting and no separate object being observed. This can lead to the realization that all the phenomena appearing in awareness are not separate from or other than the same nondual awareness.

It is this experience of nondual mindfulness, or resting as awareness, that I would like to bring to the process of healing of insecure attachment. Nondual awareness is the only thing that is truly secure in this existence. This is true because it is the one constant that cannot be changed or destroyed. It is the ultimate secure base because it is available at all times, even if that is overlooked or not consciously known. Nondual awareness is the only thing that can never leave us or let us down in any way. Where would it go? It is the substratum of all existence! It could never reject or fail us in any way. The nondual presence of our true being is pure love. In other words, it unconditionally allows everything to fully be as it is. It would not be possible for any human relationship alone to offer the same.

As mentioned previously, all relationships, no matter how relatively secure they may be, are inherently insecure because they are based in the belief of separation. Relationships, no matter how healthy, change from day to day. Sometimes other people are available to us, and sometimes they are not. The best of mothers get tired and are sometimes not available or attuned to their infant. This is the human condition. No thing, person or experience is available at all times except the nondual ground of our being. This ground is the one constant. Since security and safety is so essential to human development, the need for this can drive us deeper into our being until we finally discover what is truly secure and safe in the deepest sense. Then there is the opportunity to rest as that secure base, whether others are there for us or not.



> However, it is important to recognize that, if nondual realization occurs within an individual who has an insecure attachment, that alone does not necessarily eliminate the insecure attachment. The relational insecurity may not be identified with, but could still be present and interfere with relationships. Relational, therapeutic healing may still be needed in some form. As John Welwood states, "The hard truth is that spiritual realizations often do not heal our deep wounding&#8230;most modern spiritual practitioners continue to act out unconscious relational patterns developed in childhood. Often what is needed here is psychological work that allows us to bring the underlying psychodynamics that maintain these patterns in to consciousness." (Welwood, 2003, p.161).
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> Therefore both nondual realization and psychotherapy that can repair insecure attachment may be needed. And, therapy that includes the presence of nondual awareness would provide the optimum healing environment for this. A more secure sense of self will provide a more stable foundation to not only recognize our nondual nature, but also to embody and stabilize as that. It is paradoxical that the sense of a self can be both a secure self and no personal self at all, only awareness. (Kornfield, 1993, Wallin, 2007).


When nondual awareness is brought into the therapeutic relationship, it provides a field of wisdom, compassion, safety, clarity and love that is the truest, most powerful healing force, and the ultimate secure base. The value of bringing this potent intelligence into the therapeutic relationship is inestimatable. As a therapist rests as nondual awareness, he/she has available all the wisdom and skillful means to provide what is needed in each moment for the client. The presence of this awareness is the most potent experience of a secure base that could ever be provided. This is available to the client whether or not they are consciously aware of it. If the therapist has a secure, or earned secure attachment, this would enhance the reparative value of his/her presence even more. It is important that the therapist knows the experience of secure attachment in order to provide that for the client. The most optimum environment would be for both the therapist and client to have direct experience with the ultimate secure base of their being. All of the conditioned fears, insecurities and defensive patterns that develop as a result of insecure attachment can arise and dissolve in such a therapeutic environment. However, even without the client's conscious participation, the presence of the nondual field in the therapist has tremendous healing potential. This nondual field offers the most complete and lasting of all possible healings; this is far deeper than anything that would be possible through conventional psychotherapy without the conscious presence of nondual awareness and wisdom.


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