SURRENDER

Such a nice sounding word, “surrender.” Sur-ren-der - beautiful, really. It sounds like the sun going down over the Pacific Ocean; or a lone snowflake melting on my warm windshield. The complete giving over to another power or force more dominant in the moment.

How often have I needed to surrender and could not because of pride or prejudice. I’m a hard-headed one and surrender has never come easily to me.

This yielding is perhaps the greatest lesson taught in this Earth School. Everything seems to want attachment. I want nice clothes, enough money to handle my bills without worry, freedom from excessive pain, change, or security - all of it attachment to an outcome or condition other than what I do have in the moment. And each and every attachment, each time I am unable to surrender to the conditions and accept life in the moment on its own terms and conditions, I am removed from the moment in a fundamental way – removed from the real fulcrum of or point of power. Because the point of power is always NOW, and that means being present and available to all current conditions.

And so, surrender – again, and again. Over and over ad infinauseum until I must surrender to death, again. And when I finally, really, truly accept conditions, life and death as it is, I shall finally accept myself and everything I am and have been; everything I am not and want to be. At this powerful, unique moment which is like every other moment could have been, since truly, there are no ordinary moments, then, for the first time I have CHOICE. For the first time in my long lifetimes, real choice.

No glamour, whether physical beauty, physical place or thing, or even spiritual aspiration will hold me through my desire or aversion, and choice – not merely decision, shall be mine. I will have freedom, not bondage of even golden links. Finally, then, in this far away moment which could be now, I will be free. And not through any striving, fighting, will or judgment – only by pure acceptance; pure and complete surrender.

There is an old Zen story of a man, who later became a great teacher, traveling through Japan from China to learn Zen. After years and many lessons and disappointments, this man was on his long way home. He came upon an old monastery. It was the hottest part of the summer, at mid-day, and he espied an ancient monk working alone in the garden, stooped over, pulling weeds from the hard-baked ground. After watching the old monk for a while, the young man asked: “Why are you, Old One, working so hard alone in the garden at this time of day? You should rest in the shade or have someone younger do this hard work today?” The Old Man said: “If I did not dig these weeds, and if I did not hoe this hard ground, I would never have the experience of doing this today. And who would do it, and what would I have learned? Zen” the Old Man said, “is doing this thing now, when it must be done, not waiting until it is cooler, or for someone else to do it.? And the young man knew that he was in the presence of a Master, so he bowed and asked respectfully whether he could live and study with the Old One. Which he did.

I believe that we are naturally alive to experience. But will be especially so when we finally and completely accept who we are, including every good and bad thing that we have ever done or not done over all of our lifetimes – and learn to wholly love ourselves with all of our faults and shortcomings. When this happens, we will have learned what we came into matter (Mater) to learn, and we shall only then be ready and able to get off the wheel of birth and death.

You would think, with the amount of suffering inherent in life, that we would learn earlier. But there is this terrible beauty to life in bodies. The feelings and sensations – growth, change and decay, the adrenaline and excitement, and sex; the glamour, that is, the allure of physical life. But we have much to learn, and despite what we say, life is a wonder and we are drawn back again and again, because we feel that we are not yet complete. Because our souls are learning too, and because we are spirit learning to become human, as the saying goes, and not the other way around; because being fully human means being fully able to forgive and surrender, in that order.

Surrender, Accept, and allow ourselves to have all of the feelings that we have – even the ugly and uncomfortable ones, the ones that make us judge ourselves and others, and so keep us again from our unconditional love for ourselves and by extension, from the love of God: this is the lesson always at hand. And what is the best tool available to us? It is…trust.

Bob Drake

1994