A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself; Until he has released the anxious grip which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position. It is the irreducible truth in the monkish idea of “holy poverty”, of the way of life where there are no strings attached, in which - because all is lost - there is nothing to lose; In which there is the exhilaration of a kind of freedom which is poetically likened to the birds and the wind, or to clouds drifting in the boundless sky. It is the life which Saint Paul described as ‘poor but making many rich, as having nothing but possessing all things.’
— Alan Watts (excerpt from “Become What You Are”)
