One by one, dump your desires. Yes, all of them. Start small—say, with a desire for potato chips—and then move up from there, even as far as sugar and sex and possessions. After a couple of successful relinquishments, you’ll find it gets easier and easier to let go of these mind-made confinements. And even, strange to say, a bit thrilling. Because ultimately you arrive at your heart’s desire, the one that necessitated the sweeping away of all the others.
Gurdjieff: “Sin? Sin is what is unnecessary.” Nisargadatta: “Only the necessary is good. There is peace only in the essential.”
What we possess, we are possessed by.
One by one our interests run their course and we abandon them. This relinquishment is both natural and necessary. What man on his deathbed says, “Bring me my coin collection”?
“Empty your bowl.” Get out of your head. Relinquish your concepts. Be a space for what happens. “Don’t wobble.” Attend to your senses. Be where you are. Breathe from your heels.
Jesus said it was a disaster-in-the-making to put new wine into old wineskins. Wine in the New Testament is a metaphor for life. By co-mingling new and old, we produce a negative result. The new man is an old man relinquished, not an old man added to.
Men's Work 