Who are you Beneath the Weight of your Attachments?

By Jacqueline I. Topakian - Geneva Holistic

Who are you without the things you believe you cannot live without?

This question is not a blade but a beam of light, it dissolves the dream stuff that forms the mask of self, names, stories, narratives, roles, objects, achievements, affections, expectations. You whisper, "I am this", but when the grasp loosens, what remains? What remains when the world stops mirroring you back to yourself? When the devices fall silent, when the mirror no longer confirms your form, and when no algorithm feeds your persona with pixelated purpose?

From birth, we are cloaked in layers, material, emotional, mental layers designed to protect, define, and stabilize. But in time, they imprison and we begin to confuse the garments for the soul.

Remove the profession, the partnership, the body image, the belief system, the currency, the constructed self and the illusion begins to tremble.

"You see, the identity you protected was never you,

it was the architecture of forgetfulness".

Anything you believe you need has become your captor, even your suffering...even your healing!

We bow daily at the shrine of lack. "I need to be loved. I need to be seen. I need to succeed. I need to belong etc." But what your soul truly longs for is none of these things, it is the holy emptiness, the vast stillness, the silence...The void.

We fear these sacred voids because the ego cannot survive there, but you can. So we build identities like fortresses, polished, curated, efficient and we decorate the prison and call it our purpose. We wear chains and call them our preferences. The most deceptive form of bondage is the identity that gains approval. The false self is a clever storyteller, it says: "This is who you are" and "these are your needs". It whispers to you, "if you release them, you will vanish". But vanishing is the beginning of truth.

Who are you when there is no role to play?

Who are you when there is no mirror to please, no narrative to uphold, no screen to validate your reflection? You are not the character, you are actually the canvas. You are not the name, but the nameless presence in which names arise. You are the unspoken witness behind every spoken identity. Deep inside you know it, but remembering it, is per se, an initiatory journey of unveiling, of removing masks, of softening. The mystics knew this, the ancient ones remembered that liberation begins where false need ends.

Your truest self is not a role, not your narrative, not a wound, not a dream, it is not bound by approval, nor diminished by obscurity, it requires no affirmation, it simply is. The moment you surrender what you think sustains you, you stop being possessed by the world. You return to what you were before the world convinced you to be someone: Stillness. Awareness. Truth. And in that space, vast, formless, ungraspable, you are not just free, but you are freedom itself.

www.jacquelinetopakian.com

Geneva Holistic