The question often arises, why have I done so much and still I have so much resistance? Why am I overtaken by grief, anxiety, fear, and rage? It seems I should be different.
It is good that we practice surrender, that we dwell in our minds on the truth, but the most difficult challenge seems to be accepting ‘what is’ just as it is. This is perhaps the greatest human challenge. We can all learn techniques for surrender and find ways to make ourselves feel better but as soon as we don’t, what happens? We judge, we condemn, we take on duality, right and wrong, good and bad, and all of its variations.
We do not easily accept the feelings that arise in us. We have spent so much time controlling our reactions and responses, attempting to achieve some form of behavior that is acceptable, attempting to appear in some way that is acceptable, and that required much control, much suppression, much denial.
The human experience has been one of much trauma, much pain, much denial of freedom of expression, so much control. When something happens – whether outside of us or inside of us – to trigger emotional reaction very rarely is that emotional response freely expressed, discharged and done with. We don’t cry when we need to cry, we don’t rage when we need to rage, we don’t express our fear, our sorrow, our grief. There is nothing bad about this, nothing wrong about it. What is difficult for us is that we don’t accept life as it comes. We want it to be different. We think it should be. We have an idea about the way it should be. It is the expectation that it should be different that causes our resistance. Our resistance is not the result of the circumstances or the situation, but rather the result of our expectation that things should be different.
Often our expectation is that we shouldn’t have certain feelings or be a certain way, as if we knew what should be true, as if we had any control over what is true. Life is proceeding in its own way with its own intelligence, its own governing force. Our ideas of what it should be are irrelevant. Our ideas of how we should be are irrelevant.
Our minds are no match for the infinite intelligence that is the fundamental power in life. We cannot tell life how to be. We cannot control life. Life will express itself. This is our greatest challenge: to accept that life is the greater power, the greater intelligence. There is a power always acting for good.
We do not know what is best for us. We do not know how to heal a cell that is injured, how to pump our blood, how to breathe oxygen and convert it, how to repair and cleanse our bodies. We know nothing of how to live. That intelligence is already at work. We would be better to lay in our beds and do nothing than to do what we think we should. We would be better to lay or sit until an honest urge arises within us.
What, in this moment, do you think should be different? What are you expecting should not be the way it is? What are you fighting? What are you resisting? What is it that you think you know better how it should be? There is nothing that you know better. How can you accept that? How can you surrender your ideas and beliefs and need for control?
Stop. Stop trying to control life. Stop trying to make things the way you think they should be. Life unfolds with infinite potential and infinite possibilities. There is nothing wrong in this moment no matter how much your mind says there is, no matter how much the identity screams, no matter how much it looks like wrong. There cannot possibly be anything wrong. The dualistic mind cannot understand or accept this. The identity is born of duality – knows only right and wrong, bad and good.
You cannot listen to the arguments of duality. The one consciousness, the one power, the universal, knows nothing of duality. Its power is love. Its true nature is love. Life is an expression of love in form. It is all the intelligence there is. It is everything there is. Stop trying to control life. You cannot. It will not be controlled. You will only cause yourself suffering and misery. Acceptance and allowing are the powerful keys to your freedom. You will not always experience perfect surrender, perfect peace, but they will not be far away if you will practice acceptance and allowing. If surrender and peace elude you, then you are not accepting and you are not allowing. This is the biggest shift in our idea of how to live that we could possibly make. We have lived by will, force, control, ideas and expectations. We have brought these to our spiritual practice and have condemned ourselves when we do not surrender. When we do not feel peace and do not feel free we have judged and condemned ourselves and brought will, force and control to our very practice causing no end of frustration. Now we know.
Because we know the truth of one power, one unity, one life, we know that this moment is perfect no matter how it appears or how we experience it. There is nothing to be judged, nothing to be changed, nothing to be done. From the eyes of surrender and truth you are perfect. You are a being of light and love. You are a unique and precious individual. That is always true.