Freedom Is

Non-attachment is your invitation to soar in complete freedom. Attachment to outer things is not the only attachment we have in our lives. There is a subtler, equally powerful but more insidious attachment that happens in our inner lives – attachment to our thoughts, our acquired knowledge and learned beliefs.

Freedom can only be experienced in the emptiness of non-attachment: non-attachment to our ideas, beliefs and acquired knowledge, all of which are merely mental constructs born from the dead wood of our past, and which take our attention away from what is always here – the freshness of the present moment.

It is said that those who know, don’t know, and those who don’t know, know.

So, resting in all spaciousness, you can start asking yourself these questions:

1. If all the outer things you’ve identified with in the past, your material goods, your family, your lifestyle were taken away, what would remain?

2. If you did not have all your beliefs, constructs, ideas, learned knowledge, expertise; if all that fell away, what would remain?

3. If you could not define yourself in terms of anything – no role or job, no acquired knowledge, no car, home, relationship. If all these were not there, who would you be?

4. Without all the labels and road signs that point to you, identifying you, defining you, would there be anyone there?

5. If you could not use your family, background, your possessions, your knowledge, your material wealth or your job in order to relate to, or connect with others, what would be left?

6. If all labels dropped away, and you sincerely opened and asked: ‘Who am I?’ what would arise?...