Sannyas is a deep urge that rises from within you. It is a deep yearning. Even if the longing is not completely consistent over time and space, it is alright. You can take the jump. It may not become consistent. But becoming consistent is not the criterion needed. When it takes root, that alone is enough. You are ready. Once you jump in, everything takes care of itself.

One man was walking towards the Himalayan mountains in the winter months.

An old man saw him and asked, ‘It is so cold in the mountains. Are you sure you can make it?’

The man replied, ‘My heart is already there. So it is easy for the rest of me to reach there.’

The initiation itself will trigger the process. The outer adornments of sannyas will take care of the inner adornment. That is why, with the initiation, a new name and saffron clothing are given. They will do most of the job for you. They will keep the awareness alive every moment.

But if you start analyzing the decision to take the jump, you will miss it. Sannyas is linked to your energy. Just by seeing your energy, I can tell you are ready for sannyas! You cannot analyze energy with logic. Energy is beyond logic. When you take sannyas, the moment is right, that’s all. Even if you drop it later, have no regrets. The seed has been sown. Once a sannyasi, always a sannyasi. It will happen again at the right time. That time may be the final time.

Sannyas is a decision taken by intelligent people. When life comes to the boiling point, to a peak of depression, to a point where you feel the outer world is of no use, when there is nothing further that can be done to help your situation, there are three choices you can make.

The first choice you could make is suicide. Suicide appears to be immediate freedom but actually it creates terrible suffering. People think that suicide takes courage. Courage is a beautiful word wrongly used here. Do you need courage to rub chili powder in your own eyes?

No!

It is simple foolishness. In the same way, it does not require courage to commit suicide. It is simply foolishness. There is nothing courageous about it.

Understand the science behind suicide. Suppose your normal life span this birth is ninety years of age and you commit suicide when you are forty-five. For the remaining forty-five years, you have to wait as a spirit. Only at the end of ninety years can you choose the next body to take birth. These forty-five years will be the worst hell you can ever experience, worse than the struggle that happened when you were in the body. Suicide is not the relief you think it is.

The second choice is to resort to some sort of addiction, like drugs or alcohol, and slowly poison the system until it dies. This is equally as foolish because you are knowingly abusing the body.

The third and most intelligent path is to look into yourself. When the outer world seems to be over in your mind, the time has come to look inwards. Sannyas happens when you decide to look in and introspect.

Sannyas is the alchemy of transforming your entire lifestyle, directing your whole energy towards enlightenment. When the first thought to look in comes, when the first thought to embrace spirituality happens, the intelligent one takes the jump into sannyas. Sannyas is the shortcut.

Sannyas is a focused appointment with yourself. It is a conscious commitment to yourself that you are going to destroy ‘all that you are not’, and cleanse yourself completely.

Once you make the commitment, your seeing, hearing, talking and feeling will start being different.The same things will cause a new understanding in you. That is what commitment to sannyas does to you. When you take on sannyas, with just the energy level concurrence, bypassing your logic, you will see that there will be magic in your life. Sannyas needs only to be sown, the seed planted within you. The rest will happen automatically. Its very nature is transformation within and without.

Sannyas is going to be the only solution for the future, because it is the only thing that teaches you to be established in yourself and yet learn to act in the outer world in a playful, joyful, ecstatic way. Sannyas allows you to play any number of roles without identifying with any of them. It keeps you in continuous excitement and ecstasy all the time. It makes you experience the very essence of taking birth on planet earth.

source: Living Enlightenment