Sacrifice, Surrender and Love

As my wife pointed out to me recently a vital element of one’s path is complete surrender. Complete surrender comes with complete trust in God and complete love of God as well. But there is a kind of a Catch 22 to a complete surrender.

Complete surrender when viewed beforehand appears to involve sacrificing everything. We think of it as giving everything up. In a sense losing everything. But it is in fact the lowering of our barriers in complete surrender that allows us rather to receive everything. It is the Father’s good will to give us the kingdom of heaven.

I had a teacher once who told me that the idea that most adepts have about sacrifice is all wrong. What we give up is crap. We give up having walls. We give up the dross or the negative effluvia that stands in the way of a greater contact with God. We give up sorrow, loneliness, fear, anger, separation from God, all of the things that make our lives miserable.  The word sacrifice comes from the word sacred. To sacrifice something is to make it sacred even as the word implies. Whether this means an object, time, emotion, whatever. The catch is this. If we strive to surrender knowing that it means that we will receive everything, and our intent in surrender is to receive everything, then we most likely aren’t surrendering.  We're bargaining.  We are still holding out for gain.  My wife calls this a “merchant’ consciousness, trying to bargain our way to attainment.  It is when we believe that our surrender will take from us something we desire and yet we do it regardless of that or surrender without thought of gain because we love God enough, it is then that we are able to surrender completely.

Behind the statement that “all that is necessary for your path is to surrender” is the underlying understanding that “all that is necessary for your path is to Love God” with all your heart, all your mind, all of your soul and all of your strength. When you first fall in love and you would do anything for the object of your love, that can bring a total, (if temporary),  surrender.  Because surrender is a natural outgrowth of that total love. Within the experience of that love surrender is natural. Without it there is no true desire to surrender.