Spiritual Surrender To Feel Better

What is spiritual surrender?

Often we think we need to plan and think out each moment.

Learn to give up trying to control and amazing things begin to happen. Bring awareness to how often you wish to control this moment.

Are you comfortable surrendering to the intelligence that is not the intelligence people refer to when they talk of IQ?

In the world of apparent reality – the world you observe – conditions and circumstances will be either.

• to your liking
• not to your liking or
• you will be indifferent

Firstly, given how little you know of

• what is going on
• how you got here
• why you are here…

don’t you think it is a little presumptuous to believe that you are completely in control of every experience of your life?

Sure you have an apparent self that includes your thoughts, beliefs, self-image and values but you also have an aspect that is far greater in real-ness. This aspect I am referring to is the commonality between all human beings. Maybe it is the commonality between all beings; all life?

Lowest Common Denominator

If you step aside from your sense of “I am my story” and move to identify with a little more awareness of the ever present lowest common denominator (or should I say highest) between all of us, you are experiencing a state of being that is more liberating.

In this state of identifying as something other than your story (for example whilst sitting meditating or in a hypnotic trance) you realize that when any human being does this we all experience the same alive-ness, life force, awareness, call it what you will.

It is an experience that doesn’t permanently remove the sense of being a separate self, but what it does do is bring more awareness to that which is greater than your-self. It is this aspect which is greater than my-self which I don’t understand with my mind, that is the focus of your spiritual surrender.

Breathing

Sit here and notice for a moment that breathing happens. Really watch and admit and acknowledge to your-self that breathing happens without ‘you’; without your story or sense of self-image doing breathing. You can choose to speed it up or make it shallower or hold it for a while but there is an intelligence or process which happens without your wishes or desires.

Something will move or change despite your desire to control; this is spiritual surrender. You might also want to include faith. Faith in the ever-present condition that you are, or appear to be a part of.

How much else that goes on is really under your control? You can, and probably do

• manipulate others
• emotionally blackmail others
• choose to be aggressive
• choose what you eat etc…

but I would encourage you to spend more time in conscious awareness of not-knowing and letting go of things needing to be a certain way for you.

Practice feeling your body and feelings the way it is and surrender. Be open and let go of wanting to define what it is or should be, just experience. Surrender to the fact that it is not even a body. We just call it a body to communicate with others. It is what it is and it will be what it is irrespective of what you call it and the interpretations and assumptions you have about a body or your body.

To change your life you need to get this in your own experience. Understanding the words and creating an idea in your mind of what it might be like to notice these things is not going to bring transformation.

Sometimes it is easy to practice spiritual surrender and comes naturally in this moment. Sometimes you will find you are strongly identified with being a separate self with your own desires and need to plan an aspect of your life. Sometimes you will sit and wonder at all you can’t control and all you don’t know.

Eventually you will move beyond identifying with either and simply abide in a place where whatever is most appropriate in each situation will arise for you and whatever will arise you will accept, have faith in and surrender.

I have found forgiveness and compassion for myself a huge help. No matter the thought or action I forgive myself and accept myself. Sometimes operating in the dualistic mind – the mind of separateness. Sometimes being still and wondering and contemplating. Whatever is there is there.

It makes a whole lot of difference to your self esteem and experience of life to practice and experience spiritual surrender to what is.