There’s Only 1 Way To Find True Security

Dear Friend,

What if I told you that security was an illusion?

The number in your bank account.

The position and salary you have at work.

The number on the scale.

Your social media following.

The love and affection you receive from your partner.

As long as these things are where you want them to be, you’re happy. You feel safe. You feel secure. 

But if your weight creeps up, your bank balance drags down, or your partner gives you the cold shoulder, you start to worry. 

Maybe you worry that you’re not enough. You might become sad, depressed, irritable, or worse. 

Which all begs a very important question.

How can the things that we think give us security truly keep us feeling safe and happy if those feelings disappear once they’re ripped away?

The short answer: they don’t really help us feel secure.

To find the reason, we have to turn to the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

Instead of attaching to roles, outcomes, identities, and relationships for security, we need to embrace non-attachment and self-love.

But not just any self-love. I’m talking about love for our true selves. 

The self that can’t be damaged. The self that lets us avoid suffering and feel empowered. 

A self where we can build true security.

The only certainty in life

Ever heard of Benjamin Franklin’s famous saying, “nothing is certain except death and taxes?”

Yes, we will all face the death of our physical bodies. And taxes are inevitable.

But I would posit that there is only one certainty in life (because death and taxes fit into this realm).

The only certainty in life is impermanence.

Impermanence means that everything in this life is constantly changing. 

Take the life of a flower, for example. 

A seed is planted, blooms into a beautiful flower, spreads new seeds, withers, and dies, only to fuel the birth of a new plant later on. 

This is true of everything in life. 

Our body replaces 330 billion cells every day.

If we’re growth-minded, we learn more about ourselves and our world than we knew yesterday.

We can gain or lose weight based on how much we eat or how much we move our body.

The relationships we have also change regularly. 

We get closer to some people slowly over time and build lifelong relationships. Whereas other people are in our lives for a few minutes, hours, or months, before we never see them again and they go about their own impermanent lives. 

When we realize that everything in life is constantly changing, it becomes easier to see how foolish it is to want things to stay the same.

Wanting our relationship with our partner to be perfect all the time isn’t realistic. There will be moments where we need our space, argue, or are just going through rough times and can’t bring a loving energy to the relationship.

It’s almost impossible to keep the same weight, with the same muscle mass, and consistent body fat percentage day after day.

We’ll never escape the markers of old age like wrinkles, illness, or more brittle bones.

There are things we can do to minimize or adapt to change, but wanting things to stay the same causes suffering.

This is why it’s delusional to attempt to build security in our weight, bank balance, and our relationships (among many other things).

These things can’t be a source of true security, because they are always changing. 

One of my favorite Buddhist teachers, the late monk Thich Nhat Hanh, said this about impermanence:

“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”

A lifetime of delusion

My entire life, I craved consistency.

I wanted things to be the same as they were yesterday.

Perhaps this is because of an inconsistent environment growing up. 

After my parents’ divorce, nothing was the same. No more regular family meals or time together. My brother and I would rotate between seeing our mom and dad most days.

As I grew up, I attempted to build security in things external to myself. 

I thought if I got straight A’s, I would receive love and validation. 

I constructed my persona of a perfect and polished student to make myself feel better about the things I lacked, like lots of friends or athletic talent.

When I went to college, I built up the identity of a leader. I not only led student projects, but also held several leadership roles in a service organization I joined. Being in a position of power made me feel like I could get a secure, high-paying job by the time I graduated.

Plus, it was a nice ego boost to make me feel like I had “value.”

By the time I got a good job, a nice apartment, a newer car, and started saving some money in the bank, I felt like a responsible adult. I thought this would make me feel more secure.

Only, I wasn’t any more secure than I was before.

The more money I made, the more I thought I needed to save to experience financial security.

The more responsibility I took on at work, the more I realized I had no control over my relationships with family and friends.

I kept scrambling for security on the outside to compensate for the lack of security I felt on the inside.

I let the perception of my family, friends, bosses, and the world at large drive my decisions. 

And since I wanted to do nothing more than please them, I sought their approval and placed all my security in them. It’s no wonder I developed attachment issues.

Before I accepted my sexuality and came out, I spent years suffering. Nights with my heart pounding. Moments where I felt I would vomit. 

All at the thought of losing my family or friends.

I felt that with my family and friends in my corner, I’d be unstoppable. But without them, I would die.

I placed all my worth and security in the external world without doing the important work to build up an inner refuge and self-love.

This made coming out so challenging, because I was so afraid of being rejected and abandoned if I shared who I was.

It was this very delusion that therapy, meditation, and coaching helped me see through.

Becoming your true self

Even the concept of “I,” or what we think we are, is delusional.

Most of us conceive of this separate “I” that is actually the ego-mind.

We develop this ego in response to the world around us, in order to survive and build up a persona during the first third or half of life.

But when we look closer at our minds and turn to the wisdom of Eastern spirituality, we see that there is no such thing as an ego. When someone dies, and you ask a medical examiner performing an autopsy where the ego is in that person’s brain, they won’t be able to find it.

It is a creation of our mind.

Much like the identities we hold are created by our mind. 

So if we aren’t this ego we create, what or who are we?

And is there anything about ourselves that we can develop true security in?

Because if there’s no security in the external world, and no security in the identities our ego-mind constructs, then where can we find security?

The Upanishads and other Eastern traditions give us a hint at this. I have much more to explore in this area, but here’s a way we can solve that problem and find true security:

By performing self-inquiry.

Start with the question, Who am I?

It seems so simple at first. 

When I first asked myself this question, here’s a few things I said:

• I’m Spenser Warren

• I’m 32 years old

• I’m a gay man

• I like baseball

• I’m vegan

• I enjoy writing, reading, cooking, and going to the gym

Some of these things, like my name and age, are documentable and what many would consider factual parts of my identity. Others are hobbies I picked up or identities I created in response to my biology and environment.

But when I strip all of those things away (or you do as part of your own self-inquiry) and ask myself who Spenser Warren is, I’m eventually left with one realization.

I am.

Stripping away my identity as a gay man, the times when I felt lonely and bullied in school, the breakups and disappointing relationships, and everything else about me leave me with one thing that I am.

Pure awareness. Pure consciousness.

Some consider this our “god-like” quality. Our ability to simply observe all that is around us.

But it’s really so much more than that. It’s the part of ourselves that can never be hurt and never be damaged. Because it’s always there to access.

In order to form true security, we must embrace non-attachment to what we think will give us security (external things or conditions created by the ego) and instead pivot to showing self-love to our true self.

Our true self can be found in this constant presence, this loving awareness that we each have. 

This is what I mean when I say I want to create a more compassionate and kind world. Because we all are truly one at our core. 

We all have this pure consciousness and awareness within us, once you remove all of our egoic identities. 

Much like the external world of our job title, bank balance, or relationships changing, our egoic identities can also shift. 

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to be straight after finally accepting my gay identity, nor does it mean I should reject aspects of my identity. 

Instead, I’ll view these parts of my egoic identity with non-attachment, realizing I can enjoy them, but knowing I will suffer if I cling too tightly.

Whereas if I gain trust and accept security in the pure awareness, I will never waver. Because consciousness is always there for us to access as long as we live and breathe.

And technically, consciousness is always there, uniting every living being, regardless of whether you or I live or die.

Accessing the true self

That’s great and all, you might be thinking.

But how do we access the true self?

Well, self-inquiry is one way. But meditation is possibly my favorite way to access this part of myself.

In the next issue, we’ll discuss how to build a mental fitness habit, which includes meditation.

But for now, remember that true security can’t be found in the external.

We’ll only find true security by embracing our true self, that pure consciousness or awareness within. 

Once we accept that part of us and realize it can’t be hurt or damaged, our suffering will melt away, and we can live our lives from an empowered place of pure creation and potential.

Now how exciting is that?

Much love,

Spenser

P.S. What do you find difficult to turn away from in the search for true security?

Add a comment and let me know!