Surrender to Grace
The idea of surrendering can bring up strong reactions. It often evokes memories of wartime rallies across the ages to never, never surrender. Unfortunately, we can take this attitude into other aspects of our lives which results in destructive power struggles with the people around us. The underlying dynamic of these subsequent power struggles is our desire to be right, and it is our willingness to give up being right that brings true surrender. True surrender is not lying down and allowing others to walk over us – that is sacrifice. True surrender is our willingness to lower our fortifications, give up our position, soften our defences and to move towards the other person or people. When we gain the courage to do this and genuinely surrender the other side will also do the same.
Most of us lack sufficient courage to surrender, having spent lifetimes creating concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, and our part in all of that. We develop strong personalities and amass internal armies just in case we feel the call to attack, with fully justifiable reasons of course. We keep those angry selves, sometimes even rageful selves, in the belief we need to defend ourselves against a multitude of imaginary potential attacks. This attitude closes us off, brings up the drawbridge on our lives and blocks us from all that is in the cosmos.
The energy that surely is locked out is Grace or heaven’s love for us. Then in this deprived state we spend our lives searching for that grace – yet having closed the door on it our search will find many things but not grace. Grace is something we open to, and to be open we must first give up all our defences, we must learn the art of surrender.
As we look around at our world right now it is difficult to see much of anything or anyone in a state of grace. While there are many ideas about how to escape our present situation none of them will be truly successful unless grace is involved. It appears true that for any aspect of our lives to be truly successful, individually and collectively, we must include grace as one of the driving energies.
The invitation for grace to show up is an important part of our daily lives, and needs to be included as a daily practice. For with grace comes the juice, the ingredient that makes everything work so much better. It is similar with our microbial product: we add effective microbes and while we cannot fully dissect their complex mystery, they do make things better. When we add grace to our lives and then begin to share it everything starts to get better, we change the direction of travel and we start to transcend our challenges.
Soon some of us will come together for a 10-day seminar in Salisbury and one of our goals will be to gain the courage individually and collectively to dive deep into our blocks and regain the ability to let go and surrender, so we can once again open the portals to grace in our lives.
We and our world are thirsting for it!
With love,
Jeff