Attachment and would it be idolatry or harmful if there is a God?

 
Attachment is a problem for it makes you lose sight of your own value and leads to you failing to see that material things will not bring you happiness.
 
Laban had a beautiful idol that he worshipped both because of its beauty and because of its sentimental value. It belonged to his grandfather. One day he came back to his tent and went to the shrine where the idol was enthroned. It was not there. Jacob had stolen the idol and melted it down. It was gone forever. Laban mourned the idol. His grief was great. he said he lost his God. His wife asked him why he mourned the idol. It occurred to him that losing the idol did not make him any more or less of a person. What he had lost was his happy feelings and his enjoyment of the idol. he realised then that the idol never mattered. It was how he felt about it that mattered. His feeling of attachment was the real idol all along. The idol was not his God. He deceived himself that it was. It was how he felt about the idol that was the real God.
 
He knew not that he was so attached until he lost the idol.
 
You are not the things that you have, the job that you have, the trappings, the virtue, the vice, the money, the success - the list is endless. You get attached to things when you forget this. You think these things comprise what you are. You are a person and will still be one when they are gone and when you cease all attachment to them.
 
Was Laban attached to the thought that the idol was so precious? No. Thoughts of how precious something is can lead to feelings of attachment. It was the feelings he was attached to. Attachment is an emotional thing.
Can you be attached to a thought?
 
To try and be attached no more leaves you attached to the attempt to try. If you simply become aware of how your attachments have deceived you they will evaporate. So don't try. Just look. Just become aware. Just awaken.
 
If you are not attached to your youth and beauty, you will not feel any less of a person or you will not feel upset when they slip away from you. If you are not attached to your career, you will not be destroyed but will still be full of peace should your career end.
 
People only get attached to feelings and things because they forget these things are not permanent. When they discern realistically how things come and go and nothing lasts their attachment begins to subside.