surrender

To enter the enlightened state of being – that ultimate state of human consciousness – to reach that space within us, a total surrender is needed, a surrender to life itself.

For that surrender to come about, for it to be total surrender, we have to reach a point where we have no hope. We have to come to that place, within ourself, where we have tried everything, for ourselves, without taking the word of others. It is only after exploring all the possible avenues; when we have walked down every road open to us and found each one to be a cul-de-sac, leading nowhere; when again and again our attempts lead nowhere; when we have been faced, time after time, with a brick wall and when we have banged our head against that brick wall so many times; when we have truly felt that every apparent route does not lead us to that place which we are hoping to reach, then that state of hopelessness comes upon us.

Of course, that is a difficult time. To have lived with a dream; to have chased that dream; to have given every ounce of energy that we have to achieving, only to discover, for ourself, that there is no way to achieve, then, in that space of despair, of course, surrender comes. A total surrender can only come this way, for otherwise the surrender would be a choice and that is no surrender at all. Perhaps this total surrender is our first realisation of choicelessness.

So from the dark despair of hopelessness, we enter a space of surrender. We have surrendered control, or the illusion of control. We have surrendered knowing, or the illusion of knowing. In this surrender, something else disappears from within us and that is our sense of ourself as a controlling, autonomous being. In this total surrender, we are consumed by existence. It sounds frightening, perhaps a place we don’t want to go. And yet when this surrender comes upon us, we laugh. For in fact, there was never anything to surrender. All that has been lost is a set of illusions and misconceptions, false ideas about existence and reality. So, in surrender, we find ourself, unexpectedly, in a place of truth – simple, stark, unadorned truth. We can breathe once again. We can be, with a lightness of being, an effortlessness.

So, enlightenment can come to us, not through our efforts but only when we have made those efforts and found them to fall short; only when we have surrendered, totally, to life.