When all else fails, surrender. I remember one of my favourite teachers saying that at a talk he was giving many years ago. Then he said something like, ‘or you could just surrender in the first place.’ We laughed, thinking it quite funny. Little did I realize at the time just how powerful and true that statement was. I do have to confess that I’ve tried as many other ways of finding peace and love and joy as I could think of before I really got it. Wait, I think I need to restate that. As I look back on those times, some 30 years ago, I wasn’t even aware I was looking for peace and love and joy. I just wanted to end the misery and floundering about I had been doing for the previous 30 years or more.
I think that’s often where the journey begins isn’t it? We just want the pain or confusion or sadness or endless repetitions of what we don’t want in our lives to end. At that point we usually can’t even see the possibility of joy. We’ve used up whatever resources we had and can’t keep going so we have little choice but to give up or surrender. I thought of giving up many times in my life thinking I’d be better off dead. I don’t think that’s as unusual as one might think, we just don’t tend to tell people because they would just panic. I really had no idea there was another way, the way of surrender, because I was so firmly ensconced in the idea that I had to do it all myself, there was no help for me.
How very wrong I was. As was so often the case, I had it all backward. Now I understand Paul’s statement about looking through a mirror darkly. Mirrors are reflections of ourselves, that’s what we see the world through and the image we see is…backward! I can’t even begin to tell you how many of the ideas and beliefs I have lived with were actually completely backward. Over and over the revelation has hit me that I’ve been seeing things the opposite of what they really were. Things like being alone, having to do it all myself, having to be in control, not being enough, not being worthy, having to be defended, not being lovable and on and on. Each time I realized I had it reversed I felt a weight being lifted and an opening created for a new perspective, a new depth of love and joy and peace revealing itself.
All those dearly held, mostly subconscious, beliefs that cause us so much unhappiness, that we spend years trying to ‘fix’, are but dark shadows because we’ve been looking away from the light. Turn around, there are no shadows when we face the light. Then eventually we realize we are the light! Each and every one of us. To quote my dear friend Jesus again, ‘You are the light of the world, let your light shine.’
Surrender to the Light, it is what you are.
Namaste
