Surrender has come up for me recently.

When life kicks us around enough, there is little choice but to surrender - at least to some extent. And I see how the surrendering itself is a gift, independent of whether it helps us through with less stress or not, and what other gifts we may discover through the surrender.

Of course, the surrender itself is just an appearance, although this one too can seem very real.

Resistance and struggle

Whenever there is a belief in ideas, there is resistance to what is, to life as it shows up in the present. And this shows up as struggle, as a sense of I and Other, right and wrong, likes and dislikes.

The totality (Spirit, God, Buddha Mind) temporarily identifies with a segment of itself, with ideas and a human self, and creates a sense of struggle with the rest of itself.

So when the center of gravity is in ideas and the human self in this way, there is a sense of my will as different from, and sometimes opposed to, the will of the world. And there is a living from this as if it is real. There is resistance, and with it drama, struggle and stress.

And even this resistance is the local manifestation of the totality. It is Ground allowing the form of resistance, as it allows any other forms arising. Resistance is inherently total surrender, emptiness dancing, although it is certainly not experienced that way.

Totality awakening to itself

The only resolution and release is when the totality awakens to its own nature and any temporary exclusive identifications falls away. When this happens, there is no longer any my will and thou will. There is no doer anymore, everything is just happening. This human self and everything around it are local expressions of the totality.

Two forms of surrender

In the first case, when the center of gravity is still in the human self, there is a dipping into surrender. Situations arise that are not to this human self's liking. When they cannot easily be changed and persist for a while, resistance tends to wear down - although not quite to nothing.

In the second case, when totality has awakened to its own nature while still functionally connected with a particular human self, the whole issue of surrendering falls away.

It is, in a way, the ultimate surrendering to what is, to all the many ways the world of form arise. And since everything is just happening as expressions of the totality, absent of any I anywhere, it is also absent of any surrender.

Labels: surrender