We have been exploring Hazrat Inayat Khan\’s teachings on the law of renunciation – the most recent post, on the need to renounce may be found here – and as we have noted before, it is a difficult subject for many people for various reasons.  Nevertheless Hazrat Inayat placed great importance on this principle, and if we understand if properly, it can help us to lift a great burden from our hearts.

The Relativity of Gain

Life consists of a continual struggle for gain, of whatever kind it may be. Gain seems to be the purpose of life and it is accomplished by mastery, and this proves that one naturally must try to gain whatever seems to be good and attainable in life or whatever one needs in life; when one is able to attain it, it shows mastery, and when one is unable, it shows the lack of it. But by a still deeper insight into the subject one sees that every gain a person has in view limits him to a certain extent to that gain, directs his activities into a certain channel, and forms the line of his fate. At the same time it deprives him of a still greater or a better gain and of the freedom of activity which might perhaps accomplish something still better.

It is for this reason that renunciation is practiced by the Sufis; for with every willing renunciation a person proceeds a step towards a higher goal. No renunciation is ever fruitless. The one who is looking for a gain is smaller than his gain; the one who has renounced a thing has risen above it. Every step towards progress and ascent is a step towards  renunciation. The poverty of the one who has renounced is real riches compared with the riches of the one who holds them fast. One could be rich in wealth and poverty-stricken in reality; and one can be penniless and yet richer than the rich of the world.