At lunch, I was telling my family about an amazon prime video I had watched. It’s called ‘Spotlight’ and is based on real events depicting the Boston Globe newspaper’s journey in exposing the child abuse by priests. It led to a lively discussion around institutions, power, giving up and from there, the topic led to Anthony De Mello – who was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. He has written lots of excellent books (Recommend Awareness if you are interested). Adam mentioned that in one of Anthony’s clips he says (I am paraphrasing) – ‘When he would talk to priests – all they would want to talk about is sex – because that’s what they have given up. And when he would talk to sex workers or prostitutes, all they wanted to talk about was God and spirituality.’

Moral of the story – you are obsessed with what you give up. Because when you give up something, you are so focused on giving it up that it is almost an obsession. For your mind – it does not make a distinction between whether you are giving it up or not – all it knows that a particular topic is on your mind a lot. For example, you decide to give up dairy – and you keep googling various kinds of non-diary desserts, articles on benefits of giving up dairy. All your mind knows is that you think about dairy non-stop which from its perspectives it’s true.

Why is it that when you give up something, you are obsessed with it? If you give up something before you are ready to give it up, then there is no point. How do you know you are prepared to give up something? You are not looking to replace it with something – you are not doing something in its stead that’s when you know you are ready to give it up, but at that point, you are not giving it up because you do not have it.

I know it sounds confusing – Prof.Rao from Creativity and Personal Mastery says, ‘You cannot give up desire – desire has to give you up.’ That is the essence. But we are all humans, and we have to start somewhere. Why is it important to know the difference – so that we can accept and absorb something fully before giving it up. How can we give something up if we are not done with it – and be done with something means knowing it fully, we have explored it fully.

We cannot solve a problem by thinking the same thing – it’s the same with giving up – there has to be something different about the way we think about it and in order to do that sometimes you have to immerse yourself in it fully as opposed to fighting it even before you know what it is. Everything in life is there for us to learn – if we have not learned the lesson how much ever you try to give it up – it won’t work. But the minute you learned from your experience – it will disappear.

What are you trying to give up without having grasped it fully?
Leaving with a poem from the famous saint poet – Kabir

Kabir’s poem
“When I gave up the tying of ribbons, still I tied my garment
about me:
When I gave up tying my garment, still I covered my body in its
folds.
So when I give up passion, I see that anger remains;
And when I renounce anger, greed is still with me still;
And when greed is vanquished, pride and vainglory remain;
When the mind is detached and casts Maya away,still it clings to
the latter.
Kabir says, ‘Listen to me, dear Sadhu! the true path is rarely found.””
― Kabir, Songs of Kabir