The Author is having an extraordinary conversation with God. This piece in an excerpt from his interaction with God on renunciation, which is similar to what Krishna explains to Arjuna throughout the Gita and again in Chapter 18..
I would like to share this with readers here and would appreciate their views on the same;
God: "Yes, because ultimately all Spirit renounces what is not real, and nothing in the life you lead is real, save your relationship with Me. Yet renunciation in the classic sense of self-denial is not required.
A true Master does not “give up” something. A true Master simply sets it aside, as he would do with anything for which he no longer has any use. There are those who say you must overcome your desires. I say you must simply change them. The first practice feels like a rigorous discipline, the second, a joyful exercise.
There are those who say that to know God you must overcome all earthly passions. Yet to understand and accept them is enough.
What you resist persists. What you look at disappears.
Those who seek so earnestly to overcome all earthly passions often work at it so hard that it might be said, this has become their passion. They have a “passion for God”; a passion to know Him. But passion is passion, and to trade one for the other does not eliminate it.
Therefore, judge not that about which you feel passionate. Simply notice it, then see if it serves you, given who and what you wish to be. Remember, you are constantly in the act of creating yourself. You are in every moment deciding who and what you are.
You decide this largely through the choices you make regarding who and what you feel passionate about.
Often a person on what you call a spiritual path looks like he has renounced all earthly passion, all human desire. What he has done is understand it, see the illusion, and step aside from the passions that do not serve him—all the while loving the illusion for what it has brought to him: the chance to be wholly free.
Passion is the love of turning being into action. It fuels the engine of creation. It changes concepts to experience.
Passion is the fire that drives us to express who we really are. Never deny passion, for that is to deny Who You Are and Who You Truly Want to Be.
The renunciate never denies passion—the renunciate simply denies attachment to results. Passion is a love of doing. Doing is being, experienced. Yet what is often created as part of doing? Expectation.
To live your life without expectation—without the need for specific results —that is freedom. That is Godliness.
Renunciation is not a decision to deny action. Renunciation is a decision to deny a need for a particular result.
Man, on the other hand, often feels he needs a return on his investment. If we’re going to love somebody, fine—but we’d better get some love back. That sort of thing.
This is not passion. This is expectation.
This is the greatest source of man’s unhappiness. It is what separates man from God.
The renunciate seeks to end this separation through the experience some Eastern mystics have called samadhi. That is, oneness and union with God; a melding with and melting into divinity.
The renunciate therefore renounces results—but never, ever renounces passion. Indeed, the Master knows intuitively that passion is the path. It is the way to Self realization.
The word “renunciate” holds such wrongful meaning. In truth, you cannot renounce anything—because what you resist persists. The true renunciate does not renounce, but simply chooses differently. This is an act of moving toward something, not away from something.
You cannot move away from something, because it will chase you all over hell and back. Therefore resist not temptation—but simply turn from it. Turn toward God and away from anything unlike God."
Courtesy: Neale Donald Walsch
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