In the right battle, defeat is victory

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): My question is about renunciation. I find within me the response about what I have to do, like renunciation and poverty. I see myself inside but somehow I am fighting very strongly with the opposite in the opposite direction. And I never find the bravado to really do it. It’s not a question, it’s just… I don’t know. When I will be ready to really do this renunciation I know that I have to do?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What is it that you want to renounce?

Q: I mean the sense world. To care about external, to care about the material world. Because I’m living in the material but I am not really there. Some part in myself doesn’t believe in this anymore. So I am like repeating something in which I don’t believe anymore and I see myself no meaning in anything. But at the same time, I don’t have the strength to say that it’s enough. I don’t know…

AP: What do you mean by this word ‘poverty’?

Q: Because I understand that this renunciation for making your Ego dissolve somehow, it’s also about to make yourself little. In poverty, you don’t have anything for others to look at you and see, “oh wow.” Maybe I should not need to be a hero. Maybe because my Ego is strong, maybe I have to work…