There might appear to be a conspiracy which is bringing me deeper into the realm of surrender. It may simply be my current focus and the inner sense that deep radical surrender is the way out of a lifetime of suffering. It may also be an attractor pattern which is bringing all this to me in order to balance past karma and catapult me somewhere. And it may simply be consciousness responding to the softening of this rather hard, resistant head, saying yeah; "let's give him more opportunities to let go."



At the core of the teachings of such enlightened masters as Jesus, Buddha, Huang Po, Saint Francis, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, and Dr. David Hawkins, to name but a few, is surrender; surrender to a higher Spiritual Power. After all the intellectual talk about the ego and whomever's take on what that is, the bottom line is the same; Surrender!

Surrender is a simple and direct way of defusing the ego's reactions or responses to our buttons. If we take it a step further and surrender the juice or payoff which the ego gets in its role as the perpetrator of suffering & sabotage, we are pulling bricks out of its seemingly impervious wall. Eventually if you pull out enough bricks...

It might not collapse the first, or even the tenth time you surrender; however each time that you do, you are loosening the hold of the ego's programming. After a while, you begin to watch the response come up as if on a screen, and that loosens the hold even more, until it eventually disappears. This is not a magic wand which once waved changes life forever. It is a way of living in the world without becoming, or rather un-becoming the puppet who spasmodically jerks each time a string is pulled.

When we invoke our own will for change, we are relying upon our own limited power to accomplish that task. When we say to Divinity; "in and of myself I am incapable of handling this; please help me; I surrender all of this to you"; we are invoking the potential power of creation. This is what fuels all the twelve-step programs and makes them the most, if not the only, really effective solution for addiction in the history of mankind.

In the movie "Evan Almighty", God in the form of Morgan Freeman, tells Evan's wife (paraphrased); When you ask God to be more loving and supportive of others, He doesn't suddenly change you, but gives you more opportunities to become that." When I began my odyssey of surrender, Consciousness gave me more and more opportunities to do so. As one moves deeper into surrendering it becomes a practice in and of itself. Nisargadatta Maharaj, in his teachings, talked about the concept of neti, neti, which means "not this; not that." When used with the query of "who am I?" the response was neti, neti, the surrender of whatever came up. If one shifts that query to; "What am I? An even more impersonal search, the response is still the same. It is neti neti; it is surrender.

So what is it that blocks us from such a deep level of surrender? Who or what are we surrendering to when we say "Thy Will, Not Mine"? Are we giving everything away to some ferocious, and perhaps vengeful Deity out of the Bible other ancient writings? Or, is it that aspect of ourselves which is one with, and aware of that oneness with, all that is? If we are simply surrendering to that which is the Divine Aspect of ourselves, what has been referred to as: our "Self" (with a capital S), "higher self", "authentic self", or Buddha Nature, the mystery disappears, and the duality of something outside ourselves is removed. In the instant which we recognize that we, our Selves are both the source and the destination, the fear disappears and surrender ceases to be the open pit of the unknown. Only then can we open to the infinite love, which is a notable characteristic of the Divine Presence, and in that Presence, anything can be surrendered.