When i first started to let go of some of the distractions I had unthinkingly allowed to accumulate in my life and to look within, a friend said to me, “But I don’t want an austere life.”
I said, “I don’t either!”
She had the idea that we were going to give everything away and go live in a hut in the wilderness.
I explained to her that getting rid of a lot of our stuff and moving toward an inwardly simple life is not about deprivation or denying ourselves the things we want. It’s about getting rid of the things that no longer contribute to the fullness of our lives.
It’s also about creating balance between our outer and inner lives. One of the issues many of us are dealing with now is coming back to our centers after having spent so much time pursuing careers and creating fortunes in the outside world. We’ve neglected the inner worlds, and our souls are craving some attention. Devoting more time and energy to the cultivation of our inner lives will help us create that balance and also enable us to live our outer lives more fully.
But living fully doesn’t mean having it all, going everywhere, doing everything, and being all things to all people. Many of us are beginning to see that too much is too much. Doing too much and having too much get in the way of being able to enjoy the things we do want in our lives, and to simply be who we are.
Achieving a level of inner simplicity makes it possible to choose intelligently the things that are meaningful in our lives and that contribute to our happiness and our peace of mind.
It may ultimately mean doing fewer things and having less stuff, but that decision will come, not from self-denial, but from the wisdom that comes by taking the time to figure out what is important to us, and in letting go of all the rest.