Renunciation and Rebirth

M. Scott Peck, MD states in The Roadless Traveled that “It is in the giving up of self that human being can find the most ecstatic and lasting solid, durable joy of life.   He talks of “Bracketing”.  Bracketing is essentially the act of balancing the need for stability and assertion of the self with the need for new knowledge and greater understanding by temporarily giving up one’s self – putting one’s self aside, so to speak – so as to make room for the incorporation of the new material into the self.  Peck quotes Sam Keen of to a Dancing God “Each time I approach a strange object, person, or even, I have a tendency to let my present needs, past experience, or expectations for the future determine what I will see.  I must be aware of my preconceived ideas and characteristic emotional distortions so welcome strangeness and novelty into my perceptual world.  I must undergo a decentralization of the ego. “ Peck says the discipline of Bracketing illustrates the most consequential fact of giving up and of discipline in general. Self discipline is a self-enlarging process.  The pain of giving up is the pain of death, but death of the old is birth of the new. For us to develop a new and better idea, concept , theory or understanding means that an old idea, concept, theory or understanding must die.”

This reminds me of scripture where it says to take off the old to put on the new.  We all tend to use our past filters to view what we see and experience.  It very possibly it could be distorted view of childhood that we are still hanging on too.  If we are to grow into The Roadless Traveled, we need to acknowledge our old distorted views that trigger us. As we do this then we can respond to our world as God would want us to, with grace.  Does it mean that we have to be abused and criticized?  No, but it can give us an understanding on how we react and help us to grow into maturity to act differently.  I want to stand before God and say that I did travel The Roadless Traveled into His maturity.