Is loss the occasion for grief? Or is it the gateway to freedom and elation? It depends on who you lost. So, you see, you don’t have to mourn loss at all. Let’s say you own a whole herd of cattle and they’re all dead by morning from a terrible disease. Well, now you don’t have to get up and milk them, I’ll tell you that.
…Every loss, then, can be recontextualized as an opportunity for freedom. As valuable as that possession may have been, it still gives the opportunity now to discover a new life. The company collapses, you lose your position—is that a loss? It is only if you hang on to the past.
Why? What’s really going on is you’re afraid of the freedom that the dissolution of that commitment now opens up. You’re now free to become anything you want, go anywhere you want. Are you going to stay in the same part of the world, same part of the country? It’s sort of scary, the immensity of the freedom that you have. So, ranking then would be just a projection that we project onto this. And the question often arises, “How do you see perfection in any and all conditions?”
Beyond Illusion: Exploring Perception, Ego and Meditation on the Path to Truth, Ch. 2, pg. 47-48