To Be Dispossessed of Our Possessing

What actually belongs to us? What do we possess? What is ours? What do we own?

Luke (14) portrays Yeshua saying, “None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all of your possessions.”

As if that isn’t a harsh enough saying, it is preceded by: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even one’s own soul, cannot be my disciple.”

This cannot be right, can it? What kind of horrible choice is this? It seems like a call to fanaticism. A leader demanding absolute loyalty and devotion, with the demand that no other love or care can be allowed to compete. They must become dead to you. Else you are not worthy.

We are familiar with this dynamic, practiced by cult-leaders throughout history. Also by domestic abusers wanting total power and control.

Is that what this is?

It is worth questioning. Moreover, it is worth inquiring into our experience in relation to this text.

For those of us who have experienced manipulation and control--the demand for absolute submission, fealty, and secrecy, this passage likely awakens that trauma--understandably. This may well not be a helpful passage for you at all.

Yet if we are inclined to trust that Yeshua was deeply guided by his words in John, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly,” then we might be able to inquire more about it.

Notice the direct connection between family relations and possessions. Some kind of rejection is clearly being taught--of both family and possessions.

How on earth is this related to more abundant life? Is it not the opposite?

Unless.

Unless what Yeshua is pointing to is not that people in our lives must be rejected, nor useful things in our lives, but possessing itself. What if the source of so much of our suffering (and causing suffering) is possessing? Or, as our Buddhist friends might say, our attachments?

And what if the example of family is meant to disturb us in such a way that we might begin to see how our most cherished relationships, those whom we love, can become objects of our desires, and therefore imagine as our possessions--mine?

And what if this kind of attachment is a hindrance both to their freedom to be entirely themselves, and ours also? Automatically becoming a form of possession and control?

Even more deeply, what if this tendency in us is rooted in a very mistaken sense of self--of who and what we imagine ourselves to be? For who really owns or possesses anything? Such an imagination is an overt denial of our material impermanence here, is it not? Are we not all just passing guests? Passing through?

This invites a level of detachment. But not utter detachment. For in this freedom from possessing, there is freedom to care, to love, to be here for one another--every other, to share, to pursue the common good, the welfare of all. With an expansiveness that is not limited by notions of “mine.”

In this way, these words of Yeshua could become an invitation to freedom, rather than egoistic demand/coercion; to life experienced more abundantly.