August 17, 1963
(Mother prepares another aphorism for the next “Bulletin.”)
What aphorism do we have?
It’s about “renunciation.”
There is that thing I said: acceptance and struggle – both together. What did he say about renunciation?
94 – All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.
And your question?
I always hesitate to ask you questions, because it sets you on a certain line which isn’t necessarily what would come to you….
(silence)
I never had much that experience of “enunciation…. To renounce something, you must be attached to it, while I always had the thirst, the need to go farther, to go higher, to progress, to do better, to know better and … instead of having a sense of renunciation, you have rather a sense of good riddance! Something you get rid of that hampers you, weighs you down, hinders your advance.
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In that light, it’s very interesting.
That’s what I wrote to you the other day ["We are still all that we no longer want to be, while He is all that we want to become"]. What we call “we” in our egoistic stupidity, a stupidity of the ego, is precisely all that we no longer want to be; and it would be such a joy to throw all that away, get rid of it in order to be ready to become what we want to be.
That’s a very living experience.
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