Introduction
I find, as I grow older, that the primary source of inspiration and direction in my life, as well as the source of all Grace, Ease, Flow and movement in my life, seems to come more and more from the constant and repeated act of surrendering my life, thoughts, feelings and heart to Holy Spirit and Supreme Heart. This simple act seems to result in a profound lessening of the normal habitual concerns emanating from what I call the "local mind" (which many traditions call the ego) about the future and about security and, "success". And, it seems to lead to great levels of Grace and Ease in my life, and to a greater sense of what I will call Presence in my daily activities. If you are new to this concept, you might ask why I spoke above of constantly and repeatedly surrendering my life, thoughts, feelings and heart to Holy Spirit and Supreme Heart, rather than doing it just once. Well, it is my experience that while the first time we make such a surrender is indeed the most powerful, it is useful and helpful to repeat this act of surrender many times per day. The reason is simple: being human, we all carry within us the tens of thousands of programs, recordings, tendencies, leanings and promptings which Carl Jung called the Collective Unconscious and which various spiritual traditions have called karma, and which some New Age and alternative healing traditions prefer to call by the name of cellular memory. These recordings, memories and tendencies tend to regularly emerge in the mind, with the potential of distracting us from being gloriously happy and contented. It is for this reason that I find it very useful to regularly and constantly repeat my intention and willingness to surrender to Holy Spirit and Supreme Heart. In fact, this constant re-affirmation of surrender seems to be nearly universal in the esoteric spiritual practices of many religions and spiritual traditions, and seems to be a constantly emergent theme when we examine the lives of saints, sages and mystics across time.
A Directory of Some Other Articles on this Site on the Topic of Spiritual Surrender
As time passes, I will be adding a small body of articles to this site on the topic of spiritual surrender, and, as I do, each will be listed below:
More articles and links will be added over time.
- Everything is Perfect, There are No Emergencies, No Crises -- some notes on allowing, acceptance and grace
A Note About a Related list Group Devoted to Spiritual Surrender
I have started an email list group devoted to serious discussion on the topic of spiritual surrender. To learn more about the discussion group, please click here.
Some Concomitants of Surrender
I have noted above that one of the hallmarks of being in surrender is that one is often simply in a state of love and appreciation, one marked by very high levels of Grace and Ease. There also seems to be a focus almost exclusively upon the now, rather than upon the past or the future; there is far less concern about safety, security, being loved, or about health, and rather, there is simply Love, Grace and Ease, and the quality of Love is very much that of unconditional love, marked by the aspects of Love known through the ages as Agape and Kairos. I mentioned above the Presence in the Now and the lack of concern about the future. It seems like this may be a good time to mention here that John Wren-Lewis wrote the following about his enlightenment experience:
"In other words, I've been liberated from what William Blake called obsession with futurity, which, until it happened, I used to consider a psychological impossibility. And to my continual astonishment, for ten years now this liberation has made the conduct of practical life more rather than less efficient, precisely because time consciousness isn't overshadowed by anxious thought for the morrow."
Another aspect of surrender to Holy Spirit and Supreme Heart is a lightening, where we attach less significance and importance to anything and everything, and where external goals become less and less important and where an inner focus on the Heart becomes more and more primary; it becomes our primary source of happiness, of joy, of Grace and Ease.
A Note About the History and Origins of this Website
For those who may be wondering exactly how this website and also the related list group came about, the short story is that I was guided by Holy Spirit in mid-August 2007 to create a webpage and list group devoted to this topic of spiritual surrender. However, the longer story about what led to my being asked to start the group goes back about a week earlier... A list member -- whom I will call "Robert" of one of my ormus list groups sent an email to that list group wherein he asked:
At 05:14 PM 8/18/2007, Robert wrote:
To all and any who have surrendered themselves to holy spirit. Who follow the way of the soul and not the flesh...? How? Does spirit talk to you, is it a voice you hear, is it an intuition? How do you know what's right and what's spirit? Do you meditate and this is how the "angels" speak to you ? --Robert
And, in short order, I replied to him on the list group:
Hi Robert:
. . .I will now make a brief attempt to answer your original questions which you asked earlier. You had asked, in your original letter:
~~~~~~~~~~
"To all and any who have surrendered themselves to holy spirit. Who follow the way of the soul and not the flesh...? How? Does spirit talk to you, is it a voice you hear, is it an intuition? How do you know what's right and what's spirit? Do you meditate and this is how the "angels" speak to you ?"
~~~~~~~~~
Robert, I will answer only briefly, as this is NOT a list group about surrender to Holy Spirit [ed. note: please remember that the original reply was sent to one of my ormus list groups.], but briefly:
First, to my best knowledge, I am the only person on this list group who has said publicly (I have even said it when speaking to audiences comprising largely scientists and engineers; that is always great fun!) that they have surrendered their life to Holy Spirit/Source/Supreme Heart. Do not assume that this is true for other members of the list group unless they state that this is true for themselves.
Next, you wrote "Who follow the way of the soul and not the flesh...?" This statement is largely meaningless to me, and, if you are trying to say that this description applies to me, well, this is not accurate. I have never stated that I follow the way of the soul (although I like my soul just fine and it is a nice soul and lovable soul as souls go), but rather I have stated many times that I surrender my life to Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart, to prajna paramita. It is about going to the Heart and surrendering to Supreme Heart.
And, I am not a dualist; I see no dichotomy between Holy Spirit and flesh; the latter was and is created by the former, and thus cannot be separate and cannot be "bad" and thus cannot be disowned and thus cannot be an enemy of the path of surrender to Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart/prajna paramita. When we reside in and take refuge in prajna paramita, there is no distinction between spirit and flesh, between emptiness and form, and all is Holy Spirit and Supreme Heart, all is simply perfect dance within prajna paramita, and likewise, there is no separation and no lack of separation and there is no conflict or extinction of conflict.
Next, you wrote:
~~~~~~~~~~
"Does spirit talk to you, is it a voice you hear, is it an intuition?
How do you know what's right and what's spirit? Do you meditate and
this is how the "angels" speak to you ?"
~~~~~~~~~~
You have put the cart before the horse. The first and only necessary step is to go the Heart and consciously surrender to Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart, to prajna paramita. Then, when this sincere surrender has permeated to the deeper levels of our beingness, and has started to silence the noise of the local mind to even a small extent, we may then start to receive guidance from Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart, from prajna paramita.
However, to try to quantity or qualify this guidance or its channels/source is largely insane, and to try to do such will INSTANTLY and IMMEDIATELY bring us back into the painful throes of the "local mind", aka the ego, which is always trying to struggle, to make effort, to control, to figure things out, to complain, to compare, to attach importance, to draw distinctions, to find "the secret", and to find "answers".
Rather, all I can say to you is that once we are in surrender to Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart, to prajna paramita, then guidance can and will come from everywhere at any time; it may come as an inner voice, as an inner knowing in the heart or belly, it may come as a download of a hundred thousand pages-equivalent of information (i.e., perhaps in the sciences) in one-tenth of a second, it may come from angels or guides, it may come in the accidental words of a friend or a casual caller or a chance comment made seeming randomly by a beggar on a street corner as we pass within earshot, or it may come from cuddling a kitten or in frolicking with a prostitute, because there is no separation between Holy Spirit and the physical world, and rather, all in the physical world is in perfection and serves Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart and prajna paramita; there is no other way.
In closing, allow me to attempt to highlight what I have written above by citing some lines from the Heart Sutra, as follows:
(When in surrender to prajna paramita...)And, in closing, I will not discuss the matter of surrender to Holy Spirit/Supreme Heart and prajna paramita on this list group any further at this time, as it could draw the content too far off-topic.
There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;
no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch,
no object of mind;
and also no extinction of them,
and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness.
No ignorance and also no extinction of it,
and so forth until no old age and death
and also no extinction of them.
No suffering, no origination,
no stopping, no path, no cognition,
also no attainment with nothing to attain.
[ed. note: please remember that the original reply was sent to one of my ormus list groups.]
with care,
--Vinny
[End of my letter in response to Robert.]
In Closing
In closing this section, I wish to note that I will be adding material on this topic to this page as time permits.
A Reminder Note About a Related list Group Devoted to Spiritual Surrender
I have started an email list group devoted to serious discussion on the topic of spiritual surrender. To learn more about the discussion group, please click here.
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