What happens when you become attached is that you tie things together in a particular inaccurate way. You may tie yourself up too tightly in how another conducts his life.

When a great love comes into your life, you feel more worthy than you did before this great love came into view. By the same token, when a great love leaves your life, you feel less worthy.

You are not worth more nor are you worth less. Your worth is not dependent upon someone else's appraisals or preferences at any one given moment.

If there were no attachment, there would not be suffering. If you could take even death of beloved ones in your stride, where would attachment live? Because of Human attachment, you think something terrible has happened when a loved one dies. You mourn the whole concept of death of the body, as if the existence of the body were everything. I know that death of the body is big for you. I know that suffering is big for you.

Do not spend your life trying to improve other individuals in their personal lives. Do not know better than another what they should do and how they should do it. A need to improve others is your need, not theirs. Do not need to improve others, for it is always for your sake, not theirs. Furthermore, you only try to improve others because you have made judgments. You found the others lacking. You found yourself superior. You found your judgment and exalted it.

Do not always know better than someone else.

When you try to improve another, you invade their territory.

When you feel in the grips of something, in the grips of pain, perhaps, or in the grips of fear, or even in the grips of love, you have propelled yourself there and gripped that place, that occasion, that person. You attached yourself there. How crass of Me to say you are attached to even your pain, but attachment is its own pain. Attachment is false. Attachment is a conception you have, and — listen to this — it is never based on truth.

Attaching is its own art. You are skilled. You insert yourself. You embed yourself. You hold on for dear life.

When you attach another to yourself, you have attached yourself to them. Attachment is a clinging, and when you cling to something else, you are clung to it. You give up something of yourself when you attach to something or someone. It is never worth it. Attachment is never cost-effective. You give too much or take too much, and you lose yourself.

One mode of giving is allowing. It is a great gift when you allow another freedom, when, on all levels, you let go of control. It is one thing to keep hands off, and a greater thing to keep your heart off. Your heart’s attachment can keep another back. Attachment grows tentacles.