What does "abandonment" really entail?

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I’ve been reading Kempis’s “Imitation of Christ,” among many other tracts on Christian spirituality (Jean-Pierre de Cassaude’s “Abandonment to Divine Providence”…etc.), and one constant just gets pounded away again and again: the total abandonment of all self-will and desire… essentially “desiring nothing but God alone.” This is stated over and over again in a hundred different ways, but never does it qualify exactly what it means. In my mind, it can mean many things, including things mutually exclusive.

For example, in my situation it could mean that since I desire to help others but I fear social interactions, the part of myself that needs to be “killed off” is my anxiety, so that I may “put on Christ” by entering into more social interactions.

OR…

It could mean that my “desire to help others” is still a “desire,” and it’s that part that needs to be “killed off” so that I may “put on Christ” by learning how to accept the solitude that the Lord has given me and “desire nothing else but God” (not even social interactions).

OR…

It could mean a million other things.

So that is my confusion. As you can see, those two things are completely different and mutually exclusive paths. Both have some degree of legitimacy. Both involve a cross. Both are hard crosses to bear.

So which one does Christ want me to take? How can I know which way of “abandonment” is the right one?
 
I have some social anxiety as well, but I’d say do your best to overcome all your fears to the best of your ability.

If you try and try and you still can’t do it, then abandon yourself to God’s will in your failure.

I’m still trying to live and learn what Caussade teaches. I hope I am making a tiny bit of progress. Perhaps it’s not as hard as some of us make it out to be. It seems more difficult for some of us than others.

I believe it’s letting go of your plans, desires, security blankets, treasures whenever God asks you to and trusting Him. Some things we just have to accept, but it can be hard to know when. I bet you know that old Irish proverb aka as the serenity prayer… I remember it from my childhood…I thought it was kind of dumb as a kid, but I ponder it now more.

***God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Caussade attempts to pound into our heads that God is always in the present moment, and we just need to open our eyes, the eyes of Faith.
 
I’ve also been reading Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, and have similar questions as the OP.

It seems to me that sometimes, those references to “overcoming oneself,” “abandoning oneself” and “despising oneself” actually mean something like ‘today, one should strive to do better than one did yesterday.’

At first, I thought this meant something like “If I ironed 100 items yesterday, today, I should aspire to iron 200, and tomorrow 300.” Which, when I think about it, is quite the exausting and depressing outlook, because sooner or later, one will not be able to do any physical work anyway.

Then I read in “Consciousness Examen” by George Aschenbrenner, SJ that the point of aspiring to do better isn’t a “Ben Franklin-like striving for self-perfection,” but to see God in all things, to see how God has been working in one’s life and how one has responded.
I much recommend that essay.

(And yes, this is literally how the events followed: First I was reading Kempis, then I felt frustrated about not understanding some things, then I recalled I once heard somewhere about the “examen,” then I googled that, found and read several articles on it, one of which was Aschenbrenner’s.)
 
Just my two cents.

As I get older it dawns on me more and more the importance of that old adage of spiritual instruction: “Know thyself.”

It is only as I come to know myself that I know what needs abandoning, overcoming or despising.
 
I’m just not very good at metaphors and understanding poetic expressions, especially when they are vague and flowery.

For example, when someone says “die to self”… that could mean a lot of things, or “give everything away, hold nothing of yourself back…” or “desire nothing but God alone”… that could mean a lot of things too. I pictured myself literally going home and hauling trashbags of my personal items to the streets with “Free” signs on them. Then I said “no that’s too literal, maybe it’s more internal…” So then I pictured giving up ALL my desires, but that leads to idleness… so maybe, I thought, it has more to do with giving up my need to control outcomes (like “giving up all desires” in order to have the “outcome” of “God alone”). The thing is, I can sit around doing nothing with myself and have “God alone” … but is that really doing God’s will? By doing nothing, do I really have “God alone,” or is it still self will keeping me idle? Perhaps “having God alone” doesn’t mean having nothing else, but doing and having things and letting God dispose of them. Then you don’t technically have “God alone” (since you have other things too), but you have “God alone” in the sense that God directs all your secular activities. I’m just so confused.

And on and on it goes.

It’s kind of like my confusion regarding Christ’s definitions… “Love God and neighbor.” How am I to love you? “Keep my commandments.” What are your commandments? “Love God and neighbor.” How am I to love you though? “Keep my commandments.” … etc.

It’s difficult because everything that we are to stay away from is very specific. We know what our sins are, and it’s pretty clear that we need to stay away from them. They are specific, concrete things to stay away from. But when it comes to what we are to do with ourselves, the commandment is simply “to love.” What does that mean? “To put on Christ…” What does that mean? “To die to self…” What does that mean? “To desire nothing but God alone…” What does that mean? All of these things are very unspecific, non-concrete, and can often mean multiple things, and sometimes contradictory things.

If I really gave up all desire in life, for example, that’s usually called depression. But then I think “maybe that’s what God wants… he wants us to be depressed about the world and what is passing away…etc.” But then how do we not just sit around depressed as people with no desires, especially when we know God didn’t bring us out of slavery to let us “die in the desert” (which is an apt way to describe depression)…? How does anyone justify having anything in life? Kempis says we should be “destitute”… I almost considered becoming a homeless person!

And it just goes on and on. I’m just so confused.
 
The IMITATION OF CHRIST may be the wrong book to read for some. For the exact reasons you just gave…confusion. What it says is true, but it must be read when the time is right. I’m guessing, but for many it would be more advantageous to read Tom Sawyer.

By saying this I’m not down playing this book, but what I am saying is that there is a time when it will be a joy and a breath of fresh air. And it would advisable for anyone in their youth not to read it. For them it raises more questions than it gives answers.

ABANDONMENT is a state or frame of mind. It is the willingness for God to ask anything and be happy to give it to him as a gift out of pure love. Their are several roads God can use to lead a person to this commitment. So it isn’t really any one particular giving or individual sin. It is just wanting to do and be what God wants with no strings attached but that he be loved all the more in every way possible.

This dosen’t mean that a person is perfect or even seeking perfection in itself, but only seeking to give all one’s love and life to him out of joy and desire. It also dosen’t mean that a person will not slip into a sin, but it does mean it was a slip, and not deliberate, with the immediate response of sorrow.

Mary Magdelene is an example…perfect love…to give him everything…abandoning her every desire and being to Jesus.

No one should think that they are beyond this state. God will lead one to it by using all sorts of ways…books, people, places, experiences, prayer, life, problems, graces. But it is important that one tell Jesus of their desire to attain this state.

This to some may cause fright…to abandon everything to Jesus in whatever he asks. Because they are attached to sins and they feel they can’t do this. Even for them it is not impossible and even more than that, they should start to ask God to help them with they sinful life so that they can be one with him. Let Jesus clear that up and he will, even for those who may think there is no chance because they love their sins. This may take time and may seem like a slow process, but it will happen.

One of the short cuts to this way of abondanment is the consecration to Mary, our mother. Gradually Mary will lead a person down this path and clear up a lot of confusion.

“I know the sun is shinning even when it isn’t shinning.” Christian hymn
 
It is a tough question. Sometimes it can be better, as stated above, to avoid deep spiritual literature, especially mystical, until better versed and older.

I sustained quite a bit of damage from reading about annihilation of self in some monastic literature. It began to cause me to see (knowing I was wrong but unable to avoid the false conclusions I drew) the saints and Mary as merely stepping stools to reach God, and totally dispensable once in Heaven, never to have a thought wasted upon them again. This is the way with mystical writings. It’s just confusing and can cause terrible reactions in us.

Nevertheless, I suspect it looks something like this.

There is a painter, and the painter’s mother. The mother loves her son. The son puts himself into all of his paintings. Properly, the mother will love each painting as it is, in a way, a piece of her son, and this love flows out from her love of her son.

There are [at least] two other paths the mother can take. If love were money, she might split it up, a few coins to each painting, most of it to her son. Here, her love is divided. If such a thing be possible. She could also ignore all of the paintings of her son, and invest all of her love only in her son to the exclusion of the paintings. Perhaps she accepts the paintings not for their own value, but purely because she supposes she must for the sake of her son.

In the former of the two, her love is divided, and she loves the paintings independently of her son. In the latter, she either claims no love for the paintings, or only loves them because she must, which is erroneous as the paintings really are expressions of her son, so in truth she is offending him. Both of these designs are, I must argue, not perfect.

The perfect, again, is what came first: that she loves the paintings because her son is reflected in them, as her son only paints that which is an expression of himself.

This applies to how we interact with the world around us. When we have not “died to ourself,” we have love for paintings that is dividing our love for God, like some money to one, some to another. An example here would be, well, the way we normally live our life. We do some things for God, some for ourselves, some for our neighbor, etc… the love flows not from love of God, as it should, but the love is divided among many things.

We might also make the extreme false conclusion that I made above-- that all other things are worthless and we should only value them inasmuch as it is necessary to do so, to please God, who is the painter. Of course, this is offensive.

Again, the perfect path as I understand it, is to somehow, some way, invest all of our love in the painter, and, because the painter is reflected in his paintings, we love the paintings by virtue of our love of the painter. Being that you are a painting, this means you love yourself, by virtue of your love of God. And so on and so forth. And the things you do for yourself and for neighbor, truly reflect love of God. Again, not in the extreme false sense (I only help because God asked me to, otherwise, forget them!), but in a genuine love for the paintings that is not divided or separate from the love of the painter.

Does that… make… sense…? Heh. :o
 
Mark86 said:
And it just goes on and on. I’m just so confused.
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I can relate …

One thing I do is I declutter my living space and my possessions. I am not a hoarder, but over time, a lot of stuff tends to collect (books, magazines, clothes, kitsch, half-broken things that I’ve been meaning to repair for years, old journals and personal notes that I haven’t read and am sure will never read, numerous files on the computer …).

I try to discard something every day, even if it is just one old post-it note. Books that are still useful I donate to libraries, good enough clothes to charity.

Over time, this has proven to be a very cleansing experience, practically and mentally.

Also, in the beginning, I was quite confused as to what to discard and what to keep, but I took little steps and focused only on the stuff I was absolutely sure that I don’t need, and set the daily minimum to one item (even if it’s just a post-it note). Over time, this approach has made it so much easier to discern what to keep and what to discard.
 
What others have said in this thread has made some degree of sense. I didn’t know this when I began reading Kempis, but even the very introduction to the book talks about how challenging and confusing the work of “Imitation of Christ” can be… not only because it’s old, but because its assertions and admonishments are striking, perplexing, and difficult to congeal even with Christian understanding. Apparently this has been an issue with the book for some time. Therein is its power.

I was doing some additional reading and I basically came to the same conclusion when it comes to “spiritual reading.” I’m 28, and rather new to life. I think there is a time and place for this kind of intensive devotion to “God alone” and perhaps I’m just not there yet in terms of years. There’s a sense that I get that God does want us to practice abandonment perhaps by first calling us to Himself and then letting us run free… go and fill one’s life with meaningful experiences that bring glory to God and love to one’s neighbor… suffer the trials associated with that, but also the joys…

My father used to say “a man plans his journey, but God directs every step.” The way I see it, life is doing things, going places, experimenting, meeting people … not just sitting around…

One of the things that first called me out of my doldrums of sin and depression and to start looking to God was my desire not to waste any more time just sitting around in bed avoiding social contact. I looked at the sun one day from my bed through the blinds and it was high noon and I was still laying in bed. Then I just got this thought in my head that God has fashioned the whole universe for me to experience and enjoy as He has given me the ability to do so, and what was I doing? I was wasting my only chance to do so. That thought ended my year-long depression.

It takes some abandonment to sit in one’s room and decide on not doing anything. “I abandon my desire to experience life and meet people.” In my mind, it actually takes greater self-abandonment to decide to go and experience life and to meet people. To get out of your own head for a while and decide to go and do and love what is truly best for you rather than what you’ve been doing all your life is a bold new step that takes courage and total self-abandonment to the providence of God.

I feel like God wants more for me than I want for myself.
 
Mark86 said:
What others have said in this thread has made some degree of sense. I didn’t know this when I began reading Kempis, but even the very introduction to the book talks about how challenging and confusing the work of “Imitation of Christ” can be… not only because it’s old, but because its assertions and admonishments are striking, perplexing, and difficult to congeal even with Christian understanding. Apparently this has been an issue with the book for some time. Therein is its power.

I was doing some additional reading and I basically came to the same conclusion when it comes to “spiritual reading.” I’m 28, and rather new to life. I think there is a time and place for this kind of intensive devotion to “God alone” and perhaps I’m just not there yet in terms of years. There’s a sense that I get that God does want us to practice abandonment perhaps by first calling us to Himself and then letting us run free… go and fill one’s life with meaningful experiences that bring glory to God and love to one’s neighbor… suffer the trials associated with that, but also the joys…

My father used to say “a man plans his journey, but God directs every step.” The way I see it, life is doing things, going places, experimenting, meeting people … not just sitting around…

One of the things that first called me out of my doldrums of sin and depression and to start looking to God was my desire not to waste any more time just sitting around in bed avoiding social contact. I looked at the sun one day from my bed through the blinds and it was high noon and I was still laying in bed. Then I just got this thought in my head that God has fashioned the whole universe for me to experience and enjoy as He has given me the ability to do so, and what was I doing? I was wasting my only chance to do so. That thought ended my year-long depression.

It takes some abandonment to sit in one’s room and decide on not doing anything. “I abandon my desire to experience life and meet people.” In my mind, it actually takes greater self-abandonment to decide to go and experience life and to meet people. To get out of your own head for a while and decide to go and do and love what is truly best for you rather than what you’ve been doing all your life is a bold new step that takes courage and total self-abandonment to the providence of God.

I feel like God wants more for me than I want for myself.
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I feel I get what you are talking about. I have been reading de Caussade’s book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, and the same questions came to my mind. Yes, I want to do God’s will, but how do I discern what God’s will is? Sounds like you are asking the same question. I think it is a process. Step by step. Seek good counsel, but be patient and don’t get discouraged and never give up. The nice thing about the Abandonment book is that it reassures me that, even when I am confused as to how to grow in my faith, as long as I am seeking God and keep praying, He will find a way to save me. I might not take the most direct route, because of my own sinfulness of one kind or another, but I can at least do the basic things I know are good, and discern as best I can, and beyond that I have to trust that He will get me there.
 
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