Renunciation, self-sacrifice, is not
a gesture of greatness, to be praised and copied. We possess because
without possession we are not. Possessions are many and varied. One who
possesses no worldly things may be attached to knowledge, to ideas;
another may be attached to virtue, another to experience, another to
name and fame, and so on. Without possessions, the "me" is not; the
"me" is the possession, the furniture, the virtue, the name. In its
fear of not being, the mind is attached to name, to furniture, to
value; and it will drop these in order to be at a higher level, the
higher being the more gratifying, the more permanent. The fear of
uncertainty, of not being, makes for attachment, for possession. When
the possession is unsatisfactory or painful, we renounce it for a more
pleasurable attachment. The ultimate gratifying possession is the word
God, or its substitute, the State.
...So long as you are
unwilling to be nothing, which in fact you are, you must inevitably
breed sorrow and antagonism. The willingness to be nothing is not a
matter of renunciation, of enforcement, inner or outer, but of seeing
the truth of what is. Seeing the truth of what is brings freedom from
the fear of insecurity, the fear which breeds attachment and leads to
the illusion of detachment, renunciation. The love of what is is the
beginning of wisdom. Love alone shares, it alone can commune; but
renunciation and self-sacrifice are the ways of isolation and illusion.
The Book of Life