way of surrender

It may seem counter intuitive to gain strength by surrender. But, in fact, many have traveled this path, and that is exactly where it will lead if it is followed with persistence, through all difficulties and obstacles. It is a challenging path, but remarkably rewarding.

The path of surrender is not the way of resignation or disengagement from life. Rather, while fully involved in life's complexities, turns, promises and disillusionments, we begin to shift the focus of what matters most to us. This is a surrender not of acquiescence but of love, love so deep and all-consuming that nothing else matters except living in the infinite presence of the Beloved One.

This surrender is a deepening belief in the goodness of God always, in all circumstances. It is an active striving to remember, in the midst of all circumstances, that the loving gaze, the nazar of God rests on you always. We are not forsaken; we are never alone. God is always intimately present; closer to us than our breath. Everything that we experience, think, feel, God is with us.

The way of surrender is the way that brings an increasingly deeper vision that everything is coming to us through the loving hand of God who cherishes each of us like a precious treasure. This surrender is not a giving up but a giving over. As each circumstance, event, experience - whether good or bad, painful or joyful - enters our life we turn to God in love, and believing in his unconditional love we say "it is yours."

But then begins the discipline of surrenderance, to leave it in the hand of God. At each step to open our life to God and accept everything from him. It is a path that is walked one moment at a time, one step at a time. It is a continual turning from the self as the focal point of life and embracing Beloved God as the pivot of our very being.

It is a transformation of perception, seeing our life as not our own, but God's. It is trying to take each thing that happens as a gift from God, to gain the capacity to see Him more and more in every minutest aspect of our life. God is there; we just don't see him there. As we try to engage the discipline of surrender, every circumstance offers an opportunity to recognize God's presence in that moment. It becomes a moment to receive grace. All that we encounter in our life is just the means to experience the presence of God.

On this path everything is given to God and received from God - the pleasant and enjoyable, the distasteful and the painful. Our accomplishments are not our own, nor are our failures. Everything becomes God's - God who is the very soul of our souls, the incomparable heart of our hearts, whose light permeates our being and is the living center of all we experience as our self.

Surrender is not a passive discipline but a strenuously active re-evaluation and re-conception of each moment of life. It is a conscious and deliberate reconfiguration of our perception of our life and our role and engagement with life. It leads to a continual living with God. All of life becomes a place to meet God, to experience the love that pervades every particle and moment. We begin to see all of life bathing us in God's love, transforming everything we see and feel and do.