Inquiry with Vala Legan, September 3, 2026

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We met at Esquimault Pavilion. Our facilitator for the first part of September, Vala, presented the topic “Exploring attachment”  and began by reading a quote from K:

“There can only be relationship between two human beings when we accept ‘what is’ and not ‘what should be.’”

What does it mean to meet another person as they are, rather than through the image we have created of how they should be?

The conversation moved into the nature of attachment itself. Are we attached not only to people, but to our judgements, expectations and images of them? We often believe we are seeing another person, while perhaps we are seeing our own accumulated memories and projections. Can we notice these judgements without immediately trying to change or get rid of them? And if attachment and detachment are simply opposite movements of the same thought, is detachment really freedom?

This brought us to a deeper question: Is attachment ultimately about “me”? We explored how relationships can become intertwined with identity, security and the desire to control outcomes. Even when we care deeply for another person, might there still be an image of what that relationship should give us? At the same time, the group questioned whether love can exist without reducing it to benefit, possession or continuity.

Another important distinction emerged between wanting and vision. Wanting can arise from a sense of lack and carry an expectation of a particular result. Vision, on the other hand, seemed to leave room for possibility, curiosity and the unknown. But can even a vision become another subtle strategy for extending the “me”?

In the end, the dialogue arrived at the unknown. Can we accept what is without first deciding what it is? Perhaps accepting the present does not mean approving of it, nor finding an answer to it, but meeting it without immediately escaping into thought or fantasy. The freedom from the known that K speaks of may begin precisely there: in the willingness to stay with not knowing.

 

  • Anastasia Shtamina