The crisis, as well as the opportunity, of our time is to surrender our ego and
conditioned fear mechanisms to the primary torsion energy of unconditional love
that is seeking to evolve us and is calling us as a species home.
—  Sol Luckman

“The key to all you could become lies in your willingness to let go, and to allow
the metamorphosis, in which you are deeply enmeshed, to proceed.”
—  Rasha

Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything,
including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that we don’t want to be saved in the way God has chosen;
we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions,
to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.
—  Paulo Coelho

Every birth is a holy act of surrender.
—  Anakha Coman

What is Surrender?

Stillpoint: Surrender is state of being, an inclination of the heart towards God. It asks for your devotion, giving yourself fully to each moment as it unfolds before you. To live a surrendered life is to give your heart to Love in rapture, in ecstasy, in grief, in anger, in sadness, in dismay, in joy, in elation — to donate yourself and your life to serving the fires of Love.

Surrender is an embodied, “lived” state, not a mental concept; a way of being and a condition of the heart.  Surrender softens your face, your gaze, your heart and your body making you pliable to bend with the flowing changes of life while remaining deeply rooted. Your mind’s grip of fearful frenzied thinking and strategizing releases so that it can serve the emergence of your Soul.  It is at the threshold of surrender where you meet the immensity, intensity and intimacy of Life.  This is where playing at life – masquerading and manipulating – cease and the organic, soul-sourced impulse begins to move in you, as you, animating the life within you.  Surrender invites the movement of inspiration, grace and humility.  It creates the uncreated.  The desire of you – the true essence of you, the embodied “I AM” – is born in these precious moments of surrender.

Surrender brings us face to face with what is real, genuine, whole and harmonious within us that seeks expression in each moment.  Surrender takes us to the threshold of unknowing and avails us to the magnitude and miracle of each moment where we meet the great expanse of the Divine Mystery sprawled out before us.  It takes the cork off  bottled up life force, ideas, longings, desires, dreams, aspirations, and emotions; opening us to the unbridled freedom and spontaneity of the life.  Surrender activates the Divine emergence; our Soul’s entelechy and unique curriculum presenting as our inner and outer life conditions.  It delivers us to our knees in powerlessness where we become divinely empowered, employed and expressed.

What is it we are surrendering to? We are surrendering to being lived, to being created, to being loved, to being moved, transformed, lifted and resurrected into greater and greater states and stations of wholeness and love.  {Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.} We are surrendering to Life itself – to the fully embodied and glorious experience of Life.  There is rapture in surrender; a meeting of and merging with our unconditioned self, our native nature, and our naked essence.  When the neat, tidy categories – our addiction to logic, reason, perfection and control – fall away, dissolve and retreat into nothingness we meet our original Self.  Unencumbered by idealism and projections of what should be, surrender delivers us to the altar of what is now and what is emerging from depths of presence, our divine humanity.

Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.
—  Dogen

It is in the depths of surrender that we meet life, that we experience life and that we powerfully engage with the opportunities to receive and give, to love and be loved, to create and be created.  There is a pliability and receptivity born from a Soul in surrender that creates the inner conditions, rich with nutrients, for the Divine idea to germinate, spring forth and blossom in growth.    Surrender is the Soul crying out to her Beloved, “play me, play me, take me, take me. I am an instrument in your hands.”  And through this breathtaking devotion we become fashioned into the instruments of love that we are.  The Divine begins strumming our heart strings, pouring love’s elixir into our parched and thirsting mouths, quenching the arid territory of a Soul separated from the essential Source.  Surrender is “I thirst,” a deep desire for the Divine, for Life, for Union — the Soul in surrender, is the Soul in longing, “I thirst for God, I yearn for union, I desire love, I long to open in love, and to serve love.” It is the soul’s exhaustion from living “separate” from God and striving in the limited mind that compels and evokes the depths of our surrender.  Surrender expands our heart into the Divine heart through our release and our devotion.

Breathless and intoxicated we give ourselves to Life with tremoring faith in our hearts.  We admit our powerlessness and surrender to a power greater, an idea ever more amazing and uplifting.  This is true empowerment – surrendering to the Divine Source of Life, to the Divine Idea and to the way unfolding in front of us.  Surrender knows that a possibility exists that on our own accord we cannot perceive or conceive.  Surrender delivers us to the Divine doorway where we experience an intimate communion.  This is where emergence begins.

Surrender is not a point we reach once or twice in our lifetimes.  It is a constant, a way of being and living.  It is a way of relating and attending to that which is arising, arriving and emerging.  It is a giving of oneself to life, to the moment, to the alchemical and unpredictable process of our own becoming.  Surrender is a way of relating to self, God, others and life.  It asks for our “sacrifice” of struggle – struggling for, struggling against, struggling with – and to embrace an artful allowing and a communion with creation as it flows to and through us and into the world of our relationships, our finance, our health and our creative endeavors.

In the presence of surrender our receptivity to life and inspiration and love increases a thousand fold.  We upgrade from drinking from a leaky faucet to being showered in a fountain surging with blessings.  Surrender is being in union with the blessing of life – a fully embodied communion with love, well being, sustenance, guidance, inspiration and divine nourishment.  It is a state of grace-FULL-ness and of heart-FULL-ness.  We receive this blessed experience so that we might give of our selves.  It is through surrender that giving of what is deepest and truest within us can flow into expression. When we exhaust all other routes, surrender is what delivers us home to the state of blessedness, it is the direct route home to God.

The Surrendered Life

“Serving the emerging whole means paying attention to what’s right here within my awareness, what’s completely local, and surrendering to what’s being asked of me now.”
—  Betty Sue Flowers

We cannot know what is seeking to emerge if we are holding to what has been with a tight, clenched fist.  Surrender asks that we release the grip, open the hand and let loose of all the ideas and good intentions we have attempted to overlay onto our lives, oftentimes moving in opposition to our soul’s emergence.  Surrender brings all of the conditions of our lives into immediate alignment and places us in service to the Divine idea that is seeking to emerge.

The surrendered life is a life lived in constant communion and devotion to the Divine movement and will, surrendering our lesser intentions, distractions and machinations to the larger and greater work of our Soul.  It is a life of surrendered prayer which requires our devotion, our diligence, our presence and our mindfulness.  This is not permission to cast an absentee vote into the winds and tides to be tossed about haphazardly.  This is an intentional, devoted and deeply spiritual act of understanding our deep purpose to serve the growing oneness and to be advocates of presence, awareness and unconditional love.  It begins with a surrendered heart, a surrendered will, a surrendered intellect, asking that the Divine Idea become the most powerful force for movement, creation, interaction and interplay in our lives.  It is a letting go of our need to know, our need to fix, organize, perfect and control.  Surrender is the sacred art of allowing and remembering to deeply trust the presence of God at the center of our being and our lives.

Many of us resist the idea of surrender.  We think that it requires giving up some experience of good and well being, when in actuality the Divine Ideas holds infinitely more blessing and richness and goodness than anything the limited ego mind can imagine or create.  When we set our intention to the course (frequency) of love, of oneness, of joy, we surrender into the emergence, the blueprint that will deliver us to that experience as it unfolds moment to moment.  There is sufficiency in surrender; it is the most expedient route to our own hearts, our own congruence and connection with God, life and others.  It is through surrender that the sacred reconnection is made.  When we can no longer see a way, a way will be made for us through surrender; it will be revealed to us and will emerge from deep within us.  St. Teresa of Avila described surrender when she said, “The soul must forget about {understanding}, and abandon itself into the arms of love, and His Majesty will teach it what to do next.”

{Insert story:  the mystic’s response when faced with a transformation, a whole-hearted yes.}

The surrendered life is a life devoted to serving love’s awakening on the planet through our personal awakening and service.  It asks for all and it blesses all.  All aspects of our lives are placed in the arms of surrender; everything is donated to serve the fire of love and life. When we let go and let be with conscious awareness and intention, we draw to us all resources mystical and physical, seen and unseen to nurture the emergence coming into being.  What are we surrendering to? Ultimately and most simply we are surrendering to Love, to love’s creative, imaginative, transformative, provocative force.

Hold nothing back.
Open your chest and pour out all that lives there
Into the sacred fire of love
Live again in the Divine Truth
The Spirit of enthusiasm that surrender calls forth
Breath in, breath out…
Allow the holy breath to
Stir you into your next becoming!
Ah, sweet surrender
You are indeed the doorway
To the Kingdom of riches.
You hold the key
Cracking the code of the
Great emergence on the planet.

Are you willing to not know?  Are you willing to loosen the grip of control and maneuvering to allow for a more easeful, graceful and powerful path to emerge?  Can you surrender your faith in your self-will and self-control to receive liberation in knowing and living the Divine course for your life?  Are you willing to lay down your idea and open to the Divine Idea of what a life worth living will look, feel, sound, smell and taste like?

The surrendered life is a life lived in a consciousness of communion, of willingness and of curiosity. I am reminded of the powerful alchemy created within the 12-Step Recovery movement.  There is a deep and powerful surrender available through these steps (revised for the Law of Emergence):

1. As I stand at the edge of my own emergence and peer into the great unknown, I stand open and vulnerable to the life that desires to live in and as me.  I know that I cannot manage, control, manipulate or contain this Life, nor do I want to pretend that I can for one second longer.  I am humbled and in awe of the great unknown and the magnitude of that which is seeking to emerge within me and within my life – wholeness, oneness, goodness, wellness and happiness. “I release, I let go.”
2. In this moment of sacred silence, I know that something beautiful is seeking to emerge within me and within all expressions of life – my finances, my relationships, my creativity, my health and my consciousness.  I know that the Divine has a plan and a purpose that is in operation at the center of my being and this plan is actively bringing me into relationship with my wholeness and brilliance, my essential oneness with all.
   “In the stillness, I remember I AM.”
3. I remember that my true power is activated within my surrender to this great emergence, to the Divine’s Idea for me, my life and its many expressions.  I surrender my lesser ideas and self-will, to the highest good and Divine Will.  I surrender to the God Idea, to the good that is seeking to emerge. I rest in the knowing that all is well, in all matters of my life, all is well.  “I will my will Thy will.”

Surrendering to Source is an act of high accountability and is an expression of core strength.  Surrendering is dynamic and active and requires a reverential alertness to the movements of the Spirit. Unknowing brings us into contact with the brilliance, competence and genius of the Universe.  Surrender avails us to, puts us into proximity with the emergent brilliance of the universe.  We do not need to figure it out, nor can we.  We do not need to fix or heal, nor can we.  A powerful act in this time is to admit our powerlessness over what has been created and surrender to a new consciousness that remembers the Divine Idea that created the cosmos both heaven and earth, that same intelligence and life force and power and innate creativity lives within us, surrounds us and can move within us given our willingness to allow it.  Be willing to be swept away.

In the surrender of the heart, the soul can speak without the stifling controls of the ego.  The heart becomes free to utter the prayers that vibrate and resonate with all of creation.  We can cultivate the surrendered heart moment to moment as we choose vulnerability, openness, exposure and transparency over control, masking, posturing and competition.

Surrendering to the Essential

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential — in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth — when simply being alive is a gift beyond measure.” — Parker J Palmer

Stillpoint:  Let us surrender to the essential, let us offer up our hopes and our burdens to the essential, let us let go into the essential. Let us burn in the holy fires of the essential. Let us be born again, anew in the essential.

Surrendering to the essential. This is the movement of the emergence, to surrender to the essence of the moment and the essential unfolding.  What is essential?  This question, when taken deeply within our core and answered, guides us, inspires us: leading us into the sacred emergence occurring at the center of our lives.  We surrender the essential within us to the essential within life in sacred union, a fusion that moves us into the flow of creation.  I surrender what is essential within me to what is essential in all life.  I surrender to the essential movement that is occurring within my life and within the Divine Life.

It is time for us to evolve to a consciousness where we invest our energies in serving the creation of what is essential in our lives and on the planet.  At times we may not know what is essential and our surrender to it is enough to bring us into this divine flow and to activate the emergence.  This is what it means to serve the essential, to live a surrendered life.  Every moment, every relationship, every idea, every fear, every addiction, every compulsion, every conversation, every decision is surrendered to the Source and that Source is unconditional love.  We invite the Divine Presence in to take charge of our thinking, our breathing, our living, our loving, working, serving.  We surrender to the truth that this is already happening and our striving against it is the most unnatural thing.  Surrender is natural to the heart of love.  Everything exists to serve the emergence and surrender is the key to unlocking the hidden power in all experiences, relationships, emotions, challenges, inspirations.  To surrender is to align with the Source of Life, dynamically opening to ourselves and to the world in service to love.

God be in my head and in my understanding
God be in my eyes and in my looking
God be in my mouth and in my speaking
God be in my tongue and in my tasting
God be in my lips and in my greeting

God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling
God be in my ears and in my hearing
God be in my neck and in my humbling
God be in my shoulders and in my bearing
God be in my back and in my standing

God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving
God be in my hands and in my working
God be in my legs and in my walking
God be in my feet and in my grounding
God be in my joints and in my relating

God be in my guts and in my feeling
God be in my bowels and in my forgiving
God be in my loins and in my swiving
God be in my lungs and in my breathing
God be in my heart and in my loving

God be in my skin and in my touching
God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining
God be in my blood and in my living
God be in my bones and in my dying
God be at my end and at my reviving

Extended from the traditional prayer of Reverend Jim Cotter
and printed in his book Prayer at Night. Cairns Publications,
Sheffield, England. 1988.

i am not doing anything other than living and being these days.
very simple…no big ideas, no big plans.
at least not yet.
feeling complete and happy in being.
so much of my doing can be sourced in avoiding
the nothingness, the fear that nothingness will drown me
in unworthiness…
yet, when i settle in and descend in
i find essence, being, stillness, happiness, oneness
from here a truly blessed creation can arise
one that blesses all
stresses none
and is fully sustained and abundantly supported.
yes, it is from this foundation that i wish to move from
have my being from
co-create from
the other way
the way fear makes me move
is not FOR me anymore
not mine
not the approach i choose
so i live in the fullness of nothingness
the essence of beingness
and enJOY!

~ just to be is blessing, just to live is holy~
Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel

A voice from within the sacred emergence, the chrysalis speaks:

Dismembered life death
Swirling
No semblance of old or new
Darkness, thick grief presses into me
Lifeless
Surrendered to the hand of God
The Divine Surgeon
at work in my Soul
No movement
Quiet, Still
Eerie
Something is happening
Nothing is happening
The stillness, the deadness
No life rising up
I can only be here
Barely here
Being here
My eyes can’t see
My mind can’t trust
Old maps gone
Architectures of past tumbled to dust
Caricatures of my former self
Seeking the golden thread of new life
Will I die here?
Or will the Spirit of God
Breathe new life into me?
Will I remain here
Beyond the beyond?

“Our goal is to create a world-wide beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls
as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The technology we need most badly is the technology of community – the knowledge of how to cooperate to get things done.  Our sense of community is in disrepair.”
— Bill McKibben, The New York Review of Books

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability;
there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.
— M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace

It has been said many times before, “now is the time, we are the ones we have been waiting for.”  We have heard and read about and are now personally and globally experiencing The Great Shift —  the dissolution of institutions, systems and behaviors based in fear and domination and the uprising of a new world humanity based in unity and interconnection.  Yes, we are truly living in the “end times” and the “beginning times” – a Great Death is occurring and simultaneously so is a Great Birth.  We are collectively situated on the razor’s edge – a choice as the late mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin referred to as a choice between suicide and adoration –  “The day is not distant when humanity will realize that it is faced with a choice between suicide and adoration.”

We have arrived at this choice point and there is no turning back now.  What does it mean to choose the path of adoration?  What does it mean to be the ones we are waiting for?  What is the new consciousness calling us to embody and create?  And how do we endure the darkness of the night and as we mine the gold for a new tomorrow?

There are many answers to these questions and yet one clarion call rings true over and over again in my own mystic’s heart.  The whisper from the new world that beckons to us is calling for the co-creation of a world-wide beloved community – to live our native Oneness in and through our relationships with one another – locally and globally.  It is calling us to fully live and embody the Christ Consciousness and the vow to ‘love one another” and in so doing, create a world that works for all.

Authentic spiritual community is central to and essential for our current personal and global transformation – without it the shift in consciousness cannot and will not be fully revealed and lived.  It is one of the most powerful vehicles for grace, wholeness and transformation we have in our “arsenal” during these times as well as a manifest form of the new consciousness of the Living Oneness.  It is in and through community that a world that works for all can and will be conceived, created and lived.  And it is in and through community that a wholly, holy new divine human being will emerge.

If we accept the veracity and urgency of this call, how do we begin?  And what is the essential curriculum for such a community?

We begin with a radical searching of our own hearts and listening to and responding to the call we hear from within.  We listen to the depths of our own longing and from the depth of our knowing we move forward with clarity and with courage to call the community forth and into being. And yes, this takes an incredible courage and a surrendered willingness to face ourselves and one another, to drop the well crafted-masks and release the tight grip of our rugged and protected individualism and become something and someone new.  We begin by recognizing and acknowledging, with a radical humility, that as far as we may have come in our personal evolution that we still carry fear, distrust and resistance when we turn towards each other with unguarded hearts.  This is not an assignment for the faint of heart or spiritual dabblers, for authentic community calls forth the brightest of our light and the darkest of our shadow.  And, it is in the safety of that communal crucible that a powerful alchemy of love, compassion and embodied oneness can and will be born.

In the summer of 2008 I was called to begin a community in Portland, Oregon, to gather with people committed to taking the journey into love together.   It is through my own personal journey of traversing the landscapes of community over the past year and a half  and enduring the trials, tribulations and exhilarations that I have come to discover seven essential elements – flames of Divine Love that need to be tended to in the creation of sacred space and the nurturing of community.

• Flame #1:  Becoming  One— Creating a sacred space for the consciousness of Oneness to be the guiding force and intention – knowing for certain that there is One Purpose seeking to emerge in and through the community and the fabric of relationships.  Attuning to the One Presence rather than staying trapped in the fragmented and separate arena of the ego.  Actively practicing and returning to the consciousness of ‘when two or more are gathered.’
• Flame #2:  Emerging through Endurance — Creating a sacred space for the emergence and birth of a new Divine Human – a divinized human being working humbly with the One to transform life on earth.  This requires endurance, perseverance and commitment – a mystical, emotional and psychological staying power.  The ability to endure the darkness and mine for our personal and collective gold – the reclamation and integration of the Soul and our innate wholeness.  Endurance is an essential ingredient for the grace-filled, tender and oftentimes treacherous journey into love.

• Flame #3:  Transforming Grace — Creating a sacred space for Divine Grace to flow and harmonize and guide our interactions and relationships.  Surrendering to a Higher Intelligence and allowing the Divine Curriculum to emerge through the experiences that naturally arise in authentic community.  Everything that occurs in the community occurs in and through Divine Grace and Providence and is embraced in both shadow and light with compassion and love.  Everything and everyone is welcome and vital to the emergence and transformation.
• Flame #4:  Revealing Vulnerability — Creating a sacred space for our well-crafted masks that have been designed to protect and defend to melt and dissolve.  Revealing the True Self, the authentic Self as well as the fears and insecurities that we naturally experience as human beings.  Allowing ourselves to be seen in our light and in our shadow and to be unconditionally regarded and embraced in our humanity and our divinity.
• Flame #5:  Healing through Shadow Work — Creating a sacred space for the Shadow to be revealed and acknowledged, the parts of our psyches that are frozen in constriction and fear and unconsciously drive us and cause harm to our well being and the well being of others.  Becoming present to the disharmonious and disowned aspects of the Self and bringing them into a cohesive whole through compassion and clarity. Entering wholeness through the doorway of humility with the courage to face the darkness together.
• Flame #6:  Sharing Presence — Creating a sacred space for stillness, silence and resting in the Presence and in one another’s presence.  Entering into a state of suspended knowing to allow the mystery of what is seeking to emerge to reveal itself.  Seeing one another in the consciousness of “namaste” – seeing the Divine beauty and brilliance in the unique and diversified expression of each person.  Celebrating and honoring one another’s presence and being beyond roles, achievements and identities. Seeking and calling the Soul of each individual and the collective Soul into being through presence in each moment.
• Flame #7:  Bestowing Blessing — Creating a sacred space for giving our gifts and acknowledging and celebrating the gifts of others.  Blessing one another through the witnessing and naming of our essential nature and native gifts.  Receiving and perceiving one another as integral aspect of the whole and an essential expression of the One.  Honoring and respecting the diversity of the individual as it expresses in communion with others.  Lifting, encouraging and cheering one another on as we continue to say “yes” to doing our heart work!

“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin