How can I know who I really am, when I am attached to so many earthly things?

It means I don’t yet trust myself or know myself. For trust is knowing that everything and everyone is perfectly fine just as they are. That there is nothing I have to do and there is no one I need to fix and that I will be fine without all of the people and things I am attached to.

Looking at the origins of my attachments, I see I connect out of fear. Fear that I will be alone. Fear that I need others to survive. Fear that they will be hurt or die. Fear of what might happen, should I not worry about something or someone and try to control all of my environment.

My fear shows I have no trust in them or myself. The attachments I have clung to out of fear are building a wall to block my true self and genuine connections. I feel it in my body as a physical wall and energetic blockage. I don’t say this to shame or blame myself as this is something we all do and this attachment process is passed on to each generation.

We come into this world free, but soon learn that our bodies have needs and our body becomes our first attachment. It will also be our last. As an infant, we feel fear when hungry or feel pain and we cry. We have no tools to help ourselves and so we cry to have our needs met and then we cling to this person who met our needs and fear what happens when they leave. They become our second attachment. We don’t trust we will be OK on our own and as infants this is a genuine fear as we cannot survive on our own.

As we grow, we build our identity and this becomes another attachment. We collect attachments to people and things, such as this person helped me and so I need to please them to continue to receive their help or love. We build skills to help us attract and hold onto our attachments. We learn that our abilities, also attachments, will keep us safe and try to learn as much as possible to increase our value and to become a prized attachment for another.

When we reach puberty, our appearance takes on another attachment, as we judge ourselves to be worthy of love or not. We use our looks to attract more human attachments and then feel devastation if one of our attachments should leave us. What is wrong with me that they should leave?

Our world is great when filled with loving attachments, reminding us we are safe and worthy, but when they leave or we lose one, we build new fears of losing our attachments and so cling on even tighter and worse, learn to manipulate them to stay.

As we learn and grow we realise the emptiness of our material possessions and begin to see where our relationships may be unhealthy, as we notice that behind what we think is a genuine love, there is fear and manipulation present. When we notice this, it is time to look for real connection and to go within to find out who we really are, without all of our external attachments.

When this happens, it can be painful at first, as all the foundations that we have built our lives on start to look shaky, and we begin to see through the illusions of the false sense of safety we have placed on our attachments. Which leaves the question, who are we without all of our attachments? We begin to notice the fear present when thinking of losing an attachment and this is uncomfortable, but it is in this noticing of this fear and relaxing into it, that our attachments can be reviewed and so lessen the tight grip we have on them.

Sometimes we are forced into this process, when illness or catastrophe strikes and we are faced with losing all we hold dear. We are forced to look at who we are without our external attachments, whether it be our bodies, material possessions or loved ones, which throws us into an existential crisis and challenges us to consider who we really are.

When we come to that place of remembering who we are, be it through meditation and sitting quietly in silence or by being thrown into an existential crisis and learning to surrender to whatever is present, eventually we connect with our true essence. We start to learn we are not our bodies, and we don’t need our attachments and they don’t need us.

On saying that, I am still attached to and enjoy my body and those beings and things I choose to surround myself with, but the difference is that I am beginning to notice the deeper truth of existence and who I am and know that I will still be OK without them. I love and enjoy them for who they are and not because of a fear of losing them or that they must complete me in some way. I will not let them define me.

We are all learning and growing and by holding onto our attachments we can stagnate into fear and let them define us. We are so much bigger than that. A snake sheds its skin when the new one has grown underneath. It doesn’t hold onto the old skin, but lets it go.

Allow change and know that is how we learn and grow. Even my ideas can be attachments. Tomorrow I may think entirely differently and discard all I have written here and that is fine, it doesn’t mean I don’t have integrity, it means I allow myself to change and evolve and be with what is present here and now.