The Challenge of Surrender

In fairness, most human beings in fact do at least partially meet the challenge of compassion. We do because our hearts, voices, and minds are open to many sentient beings, and not only our family, friends and our pets, but also many people with whom we can relate. So we spend most of our lives with a pretty decent access to the energies of the lower six chakras. Yes, some people are more clearly focused on the lower three chakras and some are more activated by the higher three, but all of us need something altogether different if we are to progress onward to the Divine.

The next pause is just before the highest chakra, the crown chakra, which is our portal to spiritual connection, divine consciousness, and enlightenment. To meet the next challenge we need to know ourselves as beyond human, we need to remember that we are none other than Divine. But sadly that we cannot do. Because it’s impossible for the ego to give itself up. Just like it’s impossible to literally lift yourself up by your bootstraps. So the only way that human beings are actually seen to do the impossible is to surrender. Only by surrendering our attachments to our beliefs, powers, ambitions, identities, and even our desire for enlightenment. In other words it seems that only by giving up on our belief in our ability to bridge the gap to the divine can we find ourselves on the other side of that bridge.

But it’s not all that bad really. Because we are not actually human beings. We are divine. And we want to know or to remember our true self. So it’s not surprising perhaps that connecting with our divine nature - at least temporarily - doesn’t seem to require much surrendering at all. There are many ways in which this happens. None of them are within our control but it’s actually quite common: divine consciousness, awakenings, enlightenment, illumination, satori, glimpses, mystical experiences, visitations from God or angel, whatever you want to call it, these have been a familiar experience throughout human history. But it’s like the taste of mango. If you’ve never had a mango, there’s nothing anyone could ever say to you to communicate that experience to you. Unfortunately, unlike a mango, no one can just give you one to try. You’ll never get it until you actually get one for free, directly from the source.

To be clear I’m not talking about being Jesus or the Buddha or a Ramana Maharshi. I’m talking about ordinary everyday contact with something that transcends our normal day to day experience. I’m talking about the kind of experience that people describe after the birth of their first child, the death of a loved one, a moment of pure joy, the sight of incredible beauty, a good trip on magic mushrooms, or after a near death experience.

Personally I’ve had what I like to call ‘free samples’ since I was a child. I used to think that made me special because the experiences were so incredibly blissful, but I’ve come to realize that millions of us have these experiences. So it’s not special at all but so many of us have moved away from organized religion that we’ve lost the habit of describing what used to be known simply as Grace.

Unfortunately the free samples are just that, samples. Just a small taste of what we seek. And in my experience, it doesn’t seem to matter how delicious and pure a sample is. Although its taste may linger a while, inevitably it fades into memory and revisiting that memory is as likely to grant you what you seek as licking the wrapping of a chocolate sample is likely to produce a trip to the chocolate factory. After a while there is nothing left but your hunger for more.

Meeting the challenge of surrender is either impossible - because the ego who would try to do it is the very obstacle that needs overcoming - or incredibly rare and difficult. By all accounts, it seems to result from a combination of grace, extensive spiritual practice, and/or a breakdown of the personal ego. It’s as if we must come to the point where we are so brought so low by life that we break down and surrender to the fact that we don’t got this, we can’t do this. Usually this happens to people when life brings them to their knees, as it did famously with Eckart Tolle. For some people it’s illness, death, or bankruptcy. In other words, it takes a lot to rid a human of its egoic attachments. Maybe that’s why Jesus said a camel had a greater chance of going through the eye of a needle than a rich man could enter heaven. Not because having money prevents you from having access to the divine but because any attachment to material possession is the surest sign of a complete inability to surrender.

For spiritual seekers this is all very familiar terrain. Nothing new here. But what I liked about the Vishnu invocation is that it also speaks to the return journey, i.e. it speaks to the challenges that the divine faces when seeking to become successfully embodied in human form. And this is what led me to change my mind about publishing.

"The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao"

En quête de résonance

- Lao Tzu