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Surrender Through Love
Spiritually, no action is more important than surrender. Surrender is the tenderest impulse of the heart, acting out of love to give whatever the beloved wants.
Surrender is being alert to exactly what is happening now, not imposing expectations from the past. Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything, even when you cannot foresee the outcome of a situation.
But surrendering to another person’s ego, even your beloved’s, is not a spiritual act. At the level of the ego, two people cannot want exactly the same thing all the time. Yet at the level of spirit, they cannot help but want the same thing all the time. Your ego wants material things, predictable conclusions, continuity, security, and the prerogative to be right when others are wrong.
By definition, pursuing these goals shuts out another person unless she falls in line with “my” agenda or he realizes that “I” am the important one around here.
Your spirit is not involved in such concerns. It wants being, love, freedom, and creative opportunities. This is an entirely different level of desire, and when you reach it you can share yourself with another person without conflict. Such sharing is the core of surrender.
The gap between ego and spirit is unavoidable. It would seem impossible to close this gap, since spirit and ego are total opposites. Bringing them together is achieved through surrender, and the only force that can accomplish it is love. Surrender, then, is the next phase on love’s journey, which you enter as soon as you choose to be in relationship.
The path to love uses relationship to move you out of your limited sense of “I,” “me,” “mine” into an expanded identity – this is the growth from the self to the Self.
Adapted from The Path to Love, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press, 1997).
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add your comment »The posts here are very interesting and supportive.
I have learned that all there is, is the "I am" which allows the play of live unfolds of itself. There is nothing needed outside of that; no conditions or props. In the end all is one. Namaste, Gasho, Om Mani Padma Hum, Allah are all included in the one truth of love and freedom.
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Happy birthday Deepak! Such an enlightening post.
Seems I am already surrendering myself to the person i love.
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I believe that Love is and was meant to be unconditional, unconditional being without need of circumstance to love, thus ego is just part of the illusion we create just to know ourselves, as who we really are.
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Thanks, Deepak, and Happy Birthday!
I think a big problem for many of us, Mary, is that the "beloved" sought by ego is something beyond space-time. Thus ego is constantly being disappointed in not finding that ideal in anybody else, in any other Earth-bound person walking around here on the planet we all share.
Ego is intimately involved with the illusion of Maya, the physical world, and it constantly seeks its beloved there. Spirit suffuses the physical world with its benevolent energy, yes, but Spirit also transcends it. Spirit is infinite. We seek it in the physical plane, but the ideal "beloved" exists in its most pure state beyond the world in which ego lives-out its Earth-bound life.
The ego's only recourse, really, is surrender -- not to another ego, no, but to the blessed and perfect Spirit that animates All of Life.
In loving your lover, always honor the person there with you (the Earth-bound ego) of course. But try also to extend your love to the Spirit of whose mere Earth-bound shadow your lover is.
Yielding your own ego to another ego is fraught with possible disappointment, betrayal, heartbreak, and pain. Yielding your deepest self completely to your lover's transcendent Spirit is perfectly safe.
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Thank you. i have enjoyed your wisdom for a long time. And these words have deep meaning for me.
Taking that leap of faith. Like the tarot card seems to express.:)
Peace Love and Hugs
Lisa Ann
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Thank you Deepak for this wonderful post.
I have often thoutht of surrender as laying down my guns and giving up :-) and often fought against it. Now I see it as surrendering to life and what it wants for me. I am not quite happy with the term Beloved...it is a bit too intimate for me. Surrendering to a ficticous person; a beloved which only exists in the imagination. Surrendering to life is good enough for me.
Of course there is a higher source ....do we have to label everything and make it so personal.
By the way Happy Birthday to you Deepak.
and of course happy birthday to you too
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