Renounce

Jesus and other wisdom teachers tend to challenge would be followers to renounce everything, all possession, and then follow.  Wow!  But I have met people who said they did just that in order to become holy, an adept, a follower.  I am not sure material things is what the wisdom teacher had in mind.  I have seen people who said they embraced material poverty, a simple life-style, but who were anything but whole much less holy.  They forgot to divest themselves of soul baggage.  What?  Tightly stuffed into the bag of their soul they had stuffed such things as fear, distrust, arrogance, judgment of others, envy, jealousy, sprinkled with a dollop of whining.  This is the stuff that the wisdom sayings are all about.  Material things are relatively easy, though not really easy, to give up.  There is a glamour in that.  But the inside stuff, wow, these we cling to.  We don’t need a Spiritual Power to clean out our closets, but we do need such a power to clean out our interior mess.  What possessions possess you?