The Eastern path usually recommends totally renunciation, or Sannyasi.   When I began my path I surrendered everything, wife, child, business, and possessions.  The only thing that I could not was my house as the loan was too big for anyone I know to take.  I setup a process like negative amortization.  This makes the house’s equity pay for itself.  Not the best way to build an estate, but a great way to dissipate one.   

I spent all day and night for over a year reading only ancient philosophy and reordering my entire perspective on the world and universe.  Every action dedicated itself to uncovering what the innate nature of Gouthum and his perspective on the universe.  As readers often see me state and prove, you are the only thing that you can be sure of that exists.  All else is a perception of this consciousness.   

Thus, the goal of all self-realization is to know what that awareness is.  The quickest and most brutal way is to discharge all attachments, mental, emotional, physical, and logical.  Once you let go of everything, whatever is left, that is you.  While on this phase of my journey, I minimized conversations and contact with anything imagined to be outside of me.  Deeper I went down into the depths of what I held to be sacred to release it.   

Contrast this internalization with the modern Western path which often involves working in the outer world; doing service for the most people in the most places.  At different points in my life I have lived as a monk, without sex for seven years, drinking, or smoking.  Finally I had to live without people and objects of attachment.  Yet once I finished my renunciation and was sure of my detachment, I had to “renounce the renunciation.”   

This last concept is the most unique and controversial to my specific path and journey.  Most monks refuse to let anything come back into their life.  But if you are truly unattached it does not matter what comes into and out of your life, your steadiness remains.  Therefore I returned from the mountain after my Sannyasi.  The universe saw fit to return to me all that I surrendered without having to chase anything.   

The person living in my house for two years moved out.  A woman and I fell into love and engagement.  All possessions required for living gracefully settled into my life.  If money was needed, someone would call me with a project.  All this without every chasing anything.  It just came.  But one thing did not just come.  Visitation with my son and ex-wife was extremely strained throughout this process.   

Although I gave them considerable resources when we divorced, and my system was setup to pay child support, I had to do some specific things.  My goal was to join the ancient “Eastern,” and “Western” paths as termed here.  So even though I walked away from everything to ascend my mountain, I had to come back down with what I found.  Like a Promethean I had to return the fire stolen from the Gods to humanity.   

Duty required me to join detached leadership with connected feelings.  I joined the paths of love and wisdom without attachment-Jnana and Bhakti Yoga together to perform perfect Karma Yoga.  At this point, I had to beg for anytime with my progeny.  Thus I had to recover the custody that I gave up without a fight and I needed a written schedule that guaranteed visitation.  Over a period of five years and nearly ten thousand dollars in attorney’s fees, we reconciled.   

Last month my circle of preparation completed.  We negotiated joint-custody, re-evaluated child support, and written visitation administered by a third-party entity.  I surrendered everything knowing that the universe would care for me as it was a function of my perspective.  At one point I managed only one carload of possessions and a vehicle to cart them in.  Now after coming full circle, the world still cares for me, though with a home, a son, and a role to play.   

What is left when you have nothing else is your character.  What you do with that is your destiny and power.  From a distance the world is a perfect blue marble floating in a deep dark womb peppered with more than a million million stars.  Each shines with an internal brilliance all its own.  Each of us glows with our internal furnace likened to these floating reactors.  They shine with no thought of that which they enlighten.  So do we.