Daily Meditation: Monday, November 17, 2014

Renunciation - denying oneself so as to become richer

11/17/2014

‘Renunciation’ and ‘sacrifice’ are certainly among the words people like least, for they understand them as being synonymous with deprivation, and they tell themselves that if they do without they will die. And it is true that they will die: if they have not understood that renunciation serves only as a means for gaining access to higher regions in order to obtain something better, they are going to die. In spiritual practice, to give something up is to transpose a need, a tendency, a pleasure, onto a higher plane. You continue to eat, to love, to do different things, but with purer elements and a more selfless goal. So renunciation is not synonymous with death but with life. Those who have not understood this stagnate. And it is precisely this stagnation that carries them toward death. Whereas if they accept certain privations, they transform a raw energy into a more subtle one, and not only do they not die but they are enriched.