SURRENDER TO GRACE
“Surrender will make one understand the Grace. Grace is constant.” Ramana Maharshi
Many who have devoted their life to the spiritual path, who have surrendered to their Divinity, can tell you that along with being extremely magical, freeing and healing, it can also be extremely challenging. It is the road less traveled. One of the most unnerving challenges for me has been surrendering to God’s timing. God’s timing and people’s timing don’t always mesh and I have driven my share of people nuts when I didn’t respond to their sense of a timely fashion. I was listening to one of my favorite gospel videos on you tube, ‘Wait On You’ by Elevation Worship, the concept of waiting on God is extremely familiar to me. (Yes I listen to Gospel, I have since before I had any spiritual inclinations.) I bring this up because I have been doing just that in relationship to my next Substack article. The road most traveled says write an article once a week at least. It has haunted me, pushing my buttons about not carrying through. I was guided to wait on Divine guidance, or maybe I was being guided to write about waiting on God, or rather, more to the point, surrendering to Grace. Anyhow, when I was listening to the video I knew it was exactly what I was to write about. This made me laugh. I have learned to take life a lot less seriously in this process that is for certain. Divine humor is one of my favorite ways to learn.
The highest Spiritual practice is surrender. Surrender to Love, to Omniscience, surrender to Grace. If you really deeply explore yourself through surrender you will find at the core of you is Silence and in that silence is Grace, Love and your Truest Self. Grace can handle whatever is taking place. We just need to surrender.
Surrender has happened in increments for me, ever deepening, ever more filled with Grace. At the beginning surrender was filled with the pain of letting go, like when you have been carrying a suitcase for too long and you finally get to put it down and it hurts to open your fingers. My personal will wanted to hold on tight. The human collective agreement is to control so I had a lot of support for holding on. Never underestimate the power of the collective! To surrender to the Divine I Am is a breaking with that agreement. It is a good thing that Grace is Omnipotence and as much power as anything may appear to have, there is only one True power.
As I write this I am aware of the stillness within, the stillness that is always within all of us. It is the real I Am of each one of us and we simply need to turn to it. I am listening to the stillness, the still quiet voice. I am in the process of surrendering this article to Grace. We always have the choice, either choose control and join the world of chaos or turn to and surrender to the Truth of who we are, our true I Am which is in fact, Grace.
I can’t tell you how many times in past years I have sat crying in front of my altar beseeching God to help me as if God was a parent, something outside of me that might come to my rescue and relieve me of some suffering I was experiencing. Luckily some requests were answered (ask and it is given) but if I could go back in time and advise my younger self I would say make the right requests. The rest is Grace. Ask God to show you your true Divine nature. Listen to the stillness. Ask the question ‘Am I aware?’ and become that Awareness. God will answer in God’s timing. Awakening is a gift of Grace. Sometimes the worldly madness gets me down and I can’t seem to access the Silence. At these times I might sit in front of my altar, or wherever I am, and ask that Awareness and Silence come into my awareness. This is surrender. I can of mine own self do nothing. If suffering is what takes you to God then suffering is very useful. Just go to God and all will be taken care of. God knows what you have need of before you ask.
Many years ago I was asked to be present for a home birth for a friend of mine. At one point she was in so much pain and fear I saw her crawling toward the door. I asked what she was doing and she said that she did not like what she was experiencing and she wanted out. I stated the obvious, wherever you go you take you with you. Sometimes we have to surrender to the experience of being corporeal and to surrender our needs, our pains, our feelings and experiences over to God. Sometimes the answer is simply the Grace of having the strength to endure. If suffering happens it is very possible what is being experienced has something golden contained within it. There is a birth that wants to take place. Don’t crawl out the door. Let the treasure emerge. The mind wants to tell a story that creates attachment to the experience and thus can compound it. Surrender to Grace, the best midwife.
I cannot overstate how important patience is in the process of surrender, all in its good time. We never know, maybe everything in the Universe needs to shift to fulfill our needs. Patience connotes time which in Reality is simply non-existent. Patience is not the same as waiting. Waiting robs the moment. Patience allows presence in the moment, if impatience arises surrender that feeling to the Divine Self and get back to being present. Don’t waste your life focusing on the future. Surrender is the God gym. It means showing up and practicing the presence and developing those surrender muscles. It also, sometimes, entails standing up to the ego as the ego will always want to be in control and when patience is needed the ego likes to come in and create doubt and convince you to take control. One of the gifts in the patience that is sometimes required is it helps to bring you back into your power and your heart. True power. True Love. At the time it may not feel like it but this is the end result. We think accomplishment in the world is power. Surrender laughs, she knows the strength it takes and the resulting power the act of surrender brings.
On the other hand, surrendering to Grace can be active, an in the moment, in the motion experience. A quarterback in a football game can surrender a play, the whole game or his entire career to God. Being on a freeway is a good time to surrender. Giving a massage is a beautiful time to surrender. You never know what is going to show up while handing one’s life over to Grace. Anytime is a good time to surrender. The best is surrendering the whole life experience to Grace.
I told this story in one of my other articles but in case you missed it this is worthy of retelling and is a perfect tale of surrender. I heard an amazing man speak, an Israeli, a very devout Christian, a mystic, tell the tale of an experience he had in one of the 7 wars he was sent off to. He had an incredible sense of direction so he was often asked to lead the troops. They were in a battlefield that had been especially brutal for them. Their tanks along with the soldiers had been blown up and were on fire, they were out of ammunition and food. They were also a bit lost, having no idea where they were or how to return to base. The battle was still raging. So they called on this man to get them out of there. He, also, had no idea where he was. They insisted so he started walking, asking God to lead him. A bright light appeared before him that no one else saw. He kept walking toward it. At one point he was told by an inner voice to get down so he told the troops to hit the dirt. Bullets flew above them. No one was hurt. Further along they were walking past a ditch and he heard the voice again. Jump! They jumped into the ditch and the road they had been walking on was bombed. No one was hurt. By following this light he got them back to base. He also told how he was once sitting resting with the troops during the quiet after a battle. A soldier came up to him and asked how he could have the look he had on his face, a smile, radiance. He wasn’t even aware what his face looked like and he asked why the man asked. He said look around you. So he did and everyone looked terribly shell shocked. He, alone, was resting in God. He has surrendered his life to the Divine and Grace certainly takes care of him.
Surrender can also entail listening to your guidance and following it. Following can be the challenging part for in surrender it means you must be willing to do what you might not want to do or not do what you want to do. It’s all for the best, Grace will be in charge and that is the best. We all have intuitive guidance. It is the voice of the Divine I speaking and that voice is within us all. Recognizing guidance and developing intuition is worthy of an article of its own, so stay tuned.
Can you imagine if many of us let Surrender take us by the hand what a shift could occur? It’s already happening. Awakening is happening and Surrender rejoices. Hand the whole thing over and enjoy the ride.
‘Fire and Rain’ Artist Katherine Treffinger www.katherinetreffinger.com www.ourlivingdream.com