The thought to QUIT something is a common and understandable human strategy for managing difficult situations. Since that experience was bad…I’m never going to have it again!! I quit!
- You want me to do WHAT on this job?! I quit!!
- Constantly bending over backwards for money? I quit!
- Uncomfortable with eating, smoking, drinking, using? I quit!
- Feeling very annoyed or unhappy in this relationship? I quit!
- Angry, hurt, afraid of “x”? I quit!
- Despairing with the state of this world, of life? I quit!
In many situations, people decide to take the path of renunciation. It feels easiest, most clear, most precise, perhaps the most powerful.
Renunciates, in many religious traditions, are those who have made vows to give up many things; wealth, possessions, and passion (sexuality). People can often see the benefit in what it would be like to never have lust, longing, desire, wanting.
In both Christian and Buddhist, and many other religious paths, the freedom offered by renunciating the world and our needs in it are considered holy. More spiritual. I can get down to the business of communing with God, Spirit, Source, Universe.
I was very drawn to this approach to problem-solving. Instead of being so frustrated with not getting what I want, I would just quit asking, quit looking for it. I would QUIT WANTING!
Boy, that approach sure didn’t work. I could suppress, smash down, abandon, reject, deny, yield, veto myself, and give up and it would feel 100% forever! Never again will I speak to that person! Never again will I binge-eat!
In a matter of time…the struggle would reappear. I would need more resolve or a bigger will.
When I was 19 I decided I was going to be detached from now on (I quit!) from my past. I was going to be in the present moment. My past did not matter. I was going to stop repeating patterns.
I became fascinated with monks and renunciates, with devotees who stepped away from normal life. I became a Comparative Religion major in college (before I quit!)
In this world but NOT of it! Screw this world!
I packed everything I owned into my car. I went to the dump. I watched like a pure observer as all my school yearbooks, my photo albums, my journals, my favorite books, most of my clothes, my special childhood toys, my keepsakes fell from my hands into the enormous and deep hole that would then be trucked off into the garbage pits.
A grand purge of anything from my past history. Ready to start fresh and new.
Unfortunately, to my deepest despair, I found that it did not work. Just like diets, berating myself, being harsh, hating myself, or making plans to “get rid” of things. Rats.
There had to be another way.
I began to realize, even back then before I had encountered Byron Katie, that inquiry actually comes alive in all of us, in whatever way it can—-it is waiting. The mind begins to question itself. It wonders. It asks. It believes. It repeats itself, it is very persistent.
So I stopped renunciating, I stopped quitting. I stopped all “New Years Resolutions”. I stopped big grand sweeping Rejections. Only because they didn’t ever seem to work. They didn’t actually feel good, and I couldn’t stick with them.
It is such a strange and great paradox, because even though I quit quitting…I knew that I could live lovingly and peacefully, without the pain of wanting something to be different. I just KNEW it was possible.
It may seem counter-intuitive, a little crazy perhaps, somewhat confusing….but the way beyond “quitting” is to study the very thing I want to quit.
I open to this situation and allow it to be here. In fact, I know that since this situation brings up a lot of feelings, and thoughts, it is full of teaching. It is full of the possibility of discovery, of enlightenment.
So that thing, that person, that behavior, those thoughts, those feelings, that job, that relationship, that substance that you imagine “quitting”….write them down. Write down everything you hate about it and love about it. Use the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet.
Then begin to inquire. Study and investigate your most painful thoughts and feelings. It’s like taking inventory (this is done in the 12 Step programs). Don’t quit it! Study it all!
Here is the amazing thing that can come from this simple process: The things that you wanted to quit? They will quit you.
Ram Tzu knows this…
You are perfect.
Your every defect
Is perfectly defined.
Your every blemish
Is perfectly placed.
Your every absurd action
Is perfectly timed.
Only God could make
Something this ridiculous
Work.
Ram Tzu , NO WAY for the Spiritually “Advanced”
Love, Grace