Attachment to... What?
I listened to three of the foundations talks by Joel last night, and they are excellent as far as I can tell. Simple, accurate, spoken from integrated and mature nondual realization, and going to the shared essence of many traditions.
Attachments
One thing came up for me. There seems to be a common agreement that as long as there is not a nondual awakening (to/as ground), there is attachment.
There is a sense of "I" which creates "other" which in turn inevitably brings up attachments in form of aversions and attractions. And since the objects of this attachment is to content, and the world of form is change, there is inevitably suffering in all its many forms.
Attachment to...?
But exactly what is this attachment to? Most people, including Joel, say it is to various situations, circumstances, states, objects and so on - anything perceived as "other". And this seems accurate in a certain sense, it fits our conventional everyday experience.
Digging a little deeper, we may find further differentiation as well. It seems that among those using the Byron Katie inquires, the attachment is revealed as being to thoughts.
We believe in a thought, this has real-life impacts and takes the form of attachment to objects and situations, these objects and situations inevitably change over time, and all this leads to suffering.
[When we realize that our attachment was really just to thoughts, that thoughts inevitably are not "true" (they are just interpretations or opinions, and always inaccurate and incomplete), how much suffering we create through believing in them, and how much clarity and freedom there is without them, the belief - the attachment to the thought - tends to dissolve on its own. We have seen through it thoroughly enough for the wisdom in our system to allow the attachment to fall away. It works because we are examining what is, not trying to change anything, and by bringing our own truth into awareness we naturally become more aligned with what is.]
Obviously, this is all getting at the same - whether we say the attachment is to circumstances or thoughts. Although realizing that the attachments are to thoughts seems to give us access to more fine-tuned tools for unraveling these attachments, these beliefs in thoughts. And Byron Katie's inquiry is one of these.