We all have them – those invisible strings that tie us to the past, to old habits, to things and people we feel we can’t live without. These are our attachments, and they can be anything from a morning coffee to a deceased loved one’s belongings, keeping us tethered to a version of ourselves that no longer serves us.
Our ego, that clever inner voice, convinces us that these attachments are essential for our happiness, our security, our very identity. But in truth, they are often a crutch, a way to avoid facing the raw, unfiltered emotions that lie beneath the surface.
Imagine this: You’re about to declutter your basement. You stumble upon a box filled with your child’s baby clothes. A wave of nostalgia washes over you, a bittersweet ache for those bygone days. You hesitate. Why can’t I let go? you wonder.
This is an attachment in action. It’s not really about the clothes; it’s about the emotions they represent – the joy, the love, the fleeting sense of time standing still. We fear that letting go of the physical object means losing those precious feelings forever. In reality, the things are not solid, they are merely energy formed to give the impression to the eye that they are objects. They are clusters of ‘energy in motion’ (e-motion).
Attachments usually provoke you to ‘defend them’. If you imagine doing without your coffee, sugar or something ‘sentimental’ in a box in the basement if you think about letting it go you will hear yourself defending your need to keep it or to keep doing what you’re doing.
But here’s the truth: clinging to the past prevents us from embracing the present and creating a future filled with even greater joy. Like a tree shedding its leaves in autumn, we must release what no longer serves us to make way for new growth.
It starts with bringing all the feelings into awareness. Pay attention to your emotional reactions. Do you feel a surge of irritation if you don’t get time to get your afternoon coffee? Do you find yourself endlessly recounting stories of the past? These are signs of attachment.
Next, face your feelings. Allow the sadness, the grief, the anger to surface. Don’t judge them, simply observe them, allow them and maintain calm breathing whilst you’re processing them. This is where the real healing begins.
Letting go is not about forgetting. It’s about acknowledging the past, honoring the lessons it has taught us, and then releasing its hold on us. It’s about freeing ourselves to experience the full spectrum of human emotions, the joy and the sorrow, the light and the shadow.
When we release our attachments, we open ourselves to a world of possibilities. We create space for new experiences, new relationships, and a deeper connection to our true selves. We become more fluid, more adaptable, more alive.
Ready to let go and embrace the freedom that awaits you?
Attachments can be anything from caffeine or chocolate to clinging to someone who has passed away. An attachment is something on the outside that you ‘feel’ you cannot live without or that if it is taken away you can’t find peace.
It can be anything from coffee, sugar, your partner, your kids, your car to a relative who has passed (whose things you are still keeping in a box in the basement). The outside is only a mirror reflecting our relationship with things with have made real so far. For life to change, those things must change. We need to surrender to being more fluid. Nature mirrors the plan; there are four seasons a year where a tree goes from no leaves (ready to create) to shedding the leaves again (having had the juice out of that season’s creation and is now letting go).
When we attach, the fluidity stops and locks us into something the ego doesn’t want us to let go of simply because it you do, it will die. In reality, it’s only the feeling that will die but we haven’t been taught about this. All we feel is a strong feeling of resistance which causes resistance to letting go of what wants to leave.
Your clue that your regular mid-morning or your after dinner dessert might be a ‘cover-up’ is the bad feeling that’s coming up if you can’t have it. It’s revealing you’re deriving power through it. You’re using it to “soothe” something that wants “to move”. The ego establishes an addiction because it believes it’s keeping you safe. It’s distracting you from seeing feelings you locked away when you were too young or not coherent enough to process peacefully.
Once you skip the coffee and get past the initial tantrum (energetic argument) there’ll be a period where you’re sitting and feeling a space open up. This organically becomes a mindful time. It naturally encourages you to stop and think and you’ll find that you’re drawn to something healthier and more expansive. You might think about going for a walk or doing a job you’ve been putting off or not getting around to, or putting on a meditation.
A great place to start healing is clearing out your basement. Anything you have an emotional reaction to letting go of, will reveal an attachment. Always ask “why do I need this, why am I keeping this or why can’t I let this go?”
For example, it might be a box of your teenager’s baby clothes. Listen to your story about why you still have them. The baby period is over, you’ve had that experience, there is no baby any more. Ask… what is the feeling that these things give me that I can’t feel in my life. What feeling do I still want or want more of? It might be, “Oh they were good times!”. The reality you’ve identified is that good times are only in these things and if I let them go I won’t have good feelings any more. However, what is really happening is that you’re solidifying this energy in a box and putting it in the basement disabling it from becoming anything more.
Be mindful that you’ve had the experience and the juice it was here to give you but you’re resistant to moving on and don’t realise that it’s not just a box of clothes, it’s really a resistance to ‘expansion’ because of the emotion held within it that is stuck. While the clothes are still there it means that the matrix of energy you want can’t shift. While the old remains, the new cannot re-form and shift to a new experience.
Which of these would provoke you the most? Observe what comes up? Which one do you defend the most or which one creates the most emotional resistance? Maybe thinking about a fast, if you haven’t done one before, brings up all kinds of arguments and thoughts that aren’t true? We all have so many traumas attached to food and drink; most come from the moment we’re born when we felt we didn’t get the nourishment we wanted or when we wanted it.
Maybe the thought of a fast provokes a belief that, “I have to eat otherwise I’ll get sick. I have to eat three meals a day otherwise I can’t concentrate. My body needs certain foods otherwise I can’t function.” All these statements are not true but they may be held as a story in your body which is now driving life and keeping it limited.
The mission is to allow the feelings to surface so you can feel them and make peace with them. Sometimes it may be temporary such as abstinence from coffee, sugar, food (fasting a few days). Other times it may detaching from something more permanently after you have revealed the emotions such as the case with belongings or conversations about things in the past.
To cause a shift we have to dissolve attachments to any feelings that either hold us back from everything changing, or holding a situation in place that if changed, we could not find peace and balance.
Be ever mindful that:-
