Do you live in the freedom of giving or in the slavery of owning? You probably own something. But would you be able to give it away? The whole of it? All the things without any reservation? I will now try to explain how and why this attitude has become just natural to me, and how it helps me to be well.

There is an ancient story about a rich man who wanted to enter God’s Kingdom and asked God what needed to be done for him to get in. God answered that he had to sell all the things he owned and give the money to the poor.

Would you be able to do that? Would you have enough courage and determination for such a step?

Do you consistently nourish awareness about the insignificance of what you actually own?

People bring each other to the court of law, they sue each other for property issues.

If somebody stole you a billion, you would certainly call the police. But if it had been just a cent or a dime, would you call even then?

But the difference is not that prominent as it might seem from the first glance. Because nobody knows the remaining length of their life. If you knew, for instance, that the remaining length of your life is, say, ten years and three days. Then, of course, you would be able to calculate the value of your property for that time.

But the reality is that nobody, not even the wisest, can know the length of their life. It might be decades, but it might also be a few minutes. Our neighbor died the other day having jumped in cold water on a warm day. He was in his fifties, and no one would have expected his death. Yet he died, all of a sudden. And no one of us is safe.

Let’s hope you will live a long life. But we can’t exclude the possibility that a new day may not come. Then what would be the use from all those things and assets that you own? Only trouble. The heirs will fight.

And that is not that much about being chained to the material things when you die. I don’t know what happens then. I can’t tell you whether or not you will be accepted in the after death kingdom if you died without releasing yourself from what you owned.

But I feel it is very important to learn early that being attached to money and property poisons the life as such. You can’t feel free. You can’t love with integrity. No matter how rich we may seem to ourselves, in fact we are increasingly miserable if we are attached too heavily to those things.

In fact, only the things that we can give away without hesitation or regret, those belong to us. The things that we can’t give away without pain and sorrow, we don’t own them. They, in fact, own us!

I want to be rich, I do. But I want to be able to give away all of my money and earn again some. I would feel terribly oppressed if I were unable to earn again. That must be a real imprisonment to be a slave to what you own and live in fear to lose it! I would not wish such a life even to my enemy.

It is not an easy decision to detach your heart from what you own, especially if you own much. It is like the young man who asked God about the Kingdom. He never obeyed. He just went away. It was an unthinkable solution for him to give away all the things he owned, to the poor. And that was a sign that he did not own those things. The things, in fact, owned him. I personally think that not only did he miss the Heavenly Kingdom, but also spent his life in the world as a slave, a miserable slave of what he owned.

No matter how difficult, we should be very determined to detach our heart from what we own. All the more because you never know whether you will be owning it the next day or even the next minute.

We need personal freedom to live the life, feel love and joy.

But if we don’t release ourselves, then how can we expect the life to be great? It will be as miserable as we are, being attached to the illusory values.

Do yourself a favor, stop seeing big value in things that you own here in this world and start living the life of a free and happy person.