Mirabai gave up a palace. I began in slavery and gave up the possibility of ordinary comfort when I was given my freedom. What I noticed in both our paths is that the giving up is not primarily about the thing you give up. It is about what you discover you are without it.
Renunciation is not asceticism for its own sake. The tradition of renunciation in the Sufi path is not about punishing the body or denying the world. It is about discovering what is actually you and what is the accumulated structure of your wanting.
Most people, when they imagine losing the things they depend on, experience terror. This terror is data. It is pointing to how much of the self has been built around what is possessed rather than what is intrinsic. The examined life does not require you to give everything away. It requires you to know what you are underneath the giving away — to have made that acquaintance, even briefly.
The simplest form of this practice: spend one day — just one — without the thing you reach for most automatically when you are uncomfortable. Notice what is underneath the reaching. That is where the examination actually begins.
What do you use to not feel what you are feeling?