Today's post is an excerpt from my Zoom talk this morning on "Spiritual Surrender".
...The common definition of surrender is giving up something; what is that something? It could be an object, a thing, property, relationship, argument-- giving up something that is yours to someone else, with the implication that you have been forced to, or, it is necessary to do so. ... Surrender implies by nuance, conflict. There is an element of loss and/or control in surrender, especially when used in a legal sense. We give up fighting because we are tired of the fighting or we realize the cost of fighting is too great, (that could be legally, financially, or the physical cost of the fight, or emotional cost, mental cost)--it's too much work to keep whatever it is.
Surrender includes admission, but we often, actually give up without admitting to ourselves or anyone else that we have given up and stopped trying. We agree to some conciliatory plan to prevent others from being angry; we agree to get along, and try to not upset them. But is this surrender? Bargaining is another idea--I'll give up this, you give up that, it will work out. Sometimes, we use reasoning to resolve conflict. But here's the spiritual thing, are our conflicts with others, and things, and events, separate from our spiritual life? A separate category? Is spiritual surrender only about our spiritual life? Spiritual surrender is Giving Way. Depending on your construct of spiritual, that can mean giving way to God's will, rather than your will-- but underneath that thought is still a division, a distinct separation of God and person. Alternatively, spiritual surrender assumes the spiritual movement of life that runs through all. In which case, we are giving way to that movement. And where do we locate the movement of life? It's here, right now. Whatever is going on. So there is a time of spiritual surrender that is acceptance of what is happening, whatever it may be. A surrender to movement, flow, and events. In other words, we don't fight daily life.
...Still society's collective consciousness can pull us into fear and/or anger/blame that disturbs our capacity to surrender. Again, Spiritual surrender is not so much about giving in as it is about giving way to life's movement. We face heat and storms, in a season that archetypally is a time when nature offers freedom. Surrender now includes a changing environment, a summer that pushes us to a new awareness: climate can and does change--climate as weather, but also, climate as mass migration, of shifting wildlife, new forms of life and disappearance or disruption of our relationship to the animal world. A changing atmosphere that is not just about weather, but atmosphere in terms of social support, agreement vs conflict, and unrest. The Surrender I am encouraging includes surrendering to a changing environment, as multiple strategies emerge that will have to be negotiated and navigated. We cannot come to breakthroughs without surrendering the past, opening to what is in front of us to do.... I am saying that in surrender, there is support. We tend to think of surrender, especially spiritual surrender as, in a sense, subjugation--a should, a supposed to, subjugating ourselves. But surrender is support. The act of letting go, brings connection. In surrender, we recover connection. In essence, we surrender to our true identity, that by the nature of configuration, we cannot grasp: We are Life itself.
(Susan Nettleton)
for some of this morning's readings: https://www.designingyourlife.coach/.../for-earth-day-in... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.../the-promise-we-live-by https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.../culture-and-the...