Pathways To Surrender – Guided Meditations and Meditative Teachings From Deeper Awareness

We speak often of letting go of control, trusting in a greater power, placing our faith in a greater power.  We speak of an infinite intelligence that guides all evolution and creation.  What picture do you hold of this kind of surrender?  How does it look to you?  How does the idea of completely giving up control feel – the idea of living and acting only on that which arises spontaneously from within?

What happens to that which we think of as us – that which we are so accustomed to identifying with?  What happens to that which believes that if we do not make up our minds to act, nothing will happen?  What happens to that which forces us to do things we probably do not want to do, that which believes it must be in control and in charge?

Most of us have come to live our lives by will and force; we make ourselves do things.  We were forced to do things that we had no interest in when we were young.  We have lived by force and will for so long that we cannot believe there is another way.  Even when the truth is plainly laid out before us and we hear and know it is true because it aligns with the truth in us, we will rationalize, argue, be reasonable and say that it is impossible to live like that.

This is the real world, we say, and we must accept struggles, suffering and difficulties we encounter.  Nothing happens by magic or miracle; it’s all by hard work.

The culture, the race consciousness, will have us reminded constantly that the material world is the real world and is the world we have to live in.  We have learned that there are compromises and sacrifices we have to make and things we have to force ourselves to do.  And yet, at the deepest level of our soul we know this isn’t true.  We know, because the destiny of our evolution is to know the truth of ourselves and the truth of life and creation.

And yet the idea of giving up the identity strikes fear at the very core of our being.  Our compromise is to choose what we see as safety over freedom.  The rationalization is that a  long life of suffering and struggle is better than a short life of freedom.  That is the unconscious choice – not the conscious choice.  The conscious choice is that: if I only work harder on myself I will be free and still be able to be me.  I can perfect this identity if I make an effort and try harder and do things I do not really want to do.  I believe I can perfect myself at least in the eyes of others.

Soon, we will run out of energy from all this effort, force and use of will.  Soon we will tire of it all and find it brings no lasting reward, satisfaction or fulfillment – just the emptiness of having to keep on trying.  We keep on trying to overcome our bad, weak and wrong nature.

That is not our destiny.  We will be free – each of us in our own time and in our own way will finally perceive the truth, embrace it, welcome it, release the world of duality and identity.  It can happen in an instant and it will.  In the meantime we must choose where to place our faith, what to trust, what is real.  We must make room for the truth.  We cannot force our transformation; we can only accept and allow it.  We cannot force ourselves to surrender; we cannot make ourselves to let go.  Effort is the opposite of allowing.

Our greatest challenge is to accept and allow this moment just as it is without judgment, without analysis, without expectation or preconceived ideas.  Our challenge is to just be open to the moment as it is, knowing that it is perfect, knowing the unescapable truth that this moment is the product of the divine, knowing this moment is consciousness expressing its infinite intelligence, love and wisdom.

To fully trust and know there is nothing wrong in this moment is our pathway to transformation.  To insist and proclaim in this moment, despite any appearance or circumstance, that there is a divine perfection to all and to accept and allow exactly ‘what is’ is the path that we must follow –  not just in meditation but in life.  This is our first priority.  This is the only fulfillment of our deepest desire: to know and experience ourselves as who we truly are as consciousness in form, as love in action, as life creating.  This is our transformation: to give up our small ideas of who we are and what we are, to allow the magnificence of truth to enter our awareness, to become the experience of oneness.

Don’t stop to think about it; just allow what is in you to be.  When your mind becomes quiet you experience yourself at a deeper level.  Then the mind is not needed.  Then the soul is free to call us deeper into ourselves, deeper into the truth.  Now is the moment.

The question often arises, why have I done so much and still I have so much resistance?  Why am I overtaken by grief, anxiety, fear, and rage?  It seems I should be different.

It is good that we practice surrender, that we dwell in our minds on the truth, but the most difficult challenge seems to be accepting ‘what is’ just as it is.  This is perhaps the greatest human challenge.  We can all learn techniques for surrender and find ways to make ourselves feel better but as soon as we don’t, what happens?   We judge, we condemn, we take on duality, right and wrong, good and bad, and all of its variations.

We do not easily accept the feelings that arise in us.  We have spent so much time controlling our reactions and responses, attempting to achieve some form of behavior that is acceptable, attempting to appear in some way that is acceptable, and that required much control, much suppression, much denial.

The human experience has been one of much trauma, much pain, much denial of freedom of expression, so much control.  When something happens – whether outside of us or inside of us – to trigger emotional reaction very rarely is that emotional response freely expressed, discharged and done with.  We don’t cry when we need to cry, we don’t rage when we need to rage, we don’t express our fear, our sorrow, our grief.  There is nothing bad about this, nothing wrong about it.  What is difficult for us is that we don’t accept life as it comes.  We want it to be different.  We think it should be.  We have an idea about the way it should be.  It is the expectation that it should be different that causes our resistance.  Our resistance is not the result of the circumstances or the situation, but rather the result of our expectation that things should be different.

Often our expectation is that we shouldn’t have certain feelings or be a certain way, as if we knew what should be true, as if we had any control over what is true.  Life is proceeding in its own way with its own intelligence, its own governing force.  Our ideas of what it should be are irrelevant.  Our ideas of how we should be are irrelevant.

Our minds are no match for the infinite intelligence that is the fundamental power in life.  We cannot tell life how to be.  We cannot control life.  Life will express itself.  This is our greatest challenge: to accept that life is the greater power, the greater intelligence.  There is a power always acting for good. 

We do not know what is best for us.  We do not know how to heal a cell that is injured, how to pump our blood, how to breathe oxygen and convert it, how to repair and cleanse our bodies.  We know nothing of how to live.  That intelligence is already at work.  We would be better to lay in our beds and do nothing than to do what we think we should.  We would be better to lay or sit until an honest urge arises within us.

What, in this moment, do you think should be different?  What are you expecting should not be the way it is?  What are you fighting?  What are you resisting?  What is it that you think you know better how it should be?  There is nothing that you know better.  How can you accept that?  How can you surrender your ideas and beliefs and need for control?

Stop.  Stop trying to control life.  Stop trying to make things the way you think they should be.  Life unfolds with infinite potential and infinite possibilities.  There is nothing wrong in this moment no matter how much your mind says there is, no matter how much the identity screams, no matter how much it looks like wrong.  There cannot possibly be anything wrong.  The dualistic mind cannot understand or accept this.  The identity is born of duality – knows only right and wrong, bad and good.

You cannot listen to the arguments of duality.  The one consciousness, the one power, the universal, knows nothing of duality.  Its power is love.  Its true nature is love.  Life is an expression of love in form.  It is all the intelligence there is.  It is everything there is.  Stop trying to control life.  You cannot.  It will not be controlled.  You will only cause yourself suffering and misery.  Acceptance and allowing are the powerful keys to your freedom.  You will not always experience perfect surrender, perfect peace, but they will not be far away if you will practice acceptance and allowing.  If surrender and peace elude you, then you are not accepting and you are not allowing. This is the biggest shift in our idea of how to live that we could possibly make.  We have lived by will, force, control, ideas and expectations.  We have brought these to our spiritual practice and have condemned ourselves when we do not surrender.  When we do not feel peace and do not feel free we have judged and condemned ourselves and brought will, force and control to our very practice causing no end of frustration.  Now we know.

Because we know the truth of one power, one unity, one life, we know that this moment is perfect no matter how it appears or how we experience it.  There is nothing to be judged, nothing to be changed, nothing to be done.  From the eyes of surrender and truth you are perfect.  You are a being of light and love.  You are a unique and precious individual.  That is always true.

The goal of this meditation is to help us move from a state of fear to a state of trust. As we have discussed, fear is the basis of all our ways of being that are not authentic. Each one of us is unique and individual with our own set of experiences and history, our own set of strengths, skills and talents, and no one journey is like any other. But the basis of the problem of not feeling free in peace and love is the same for everyone. It is the basis for our feelings of separation, a feeling that we are alone and on our own, that we are different and separate. It is the basis for our creation and trust and faith in the identity which has no reality at all. It is the basis of our belief in duality, in our need for judgment. This fear is so pervasive that we aren’t even aware of it. Most of us are completely unconscious of any fear but we know it’s there because we don’t feel peace, we don’t feel deep unconditional love for life. We don’t feel free to express ourselves just as we choose. So the task we have set ourselves with our practice, with our study, our affirmations, prayers and reminders, is to move back to a state of trusting and allowing ourselves to be exactly what we are.

One of the chronic conditions of fear is tension. We hold ourselves tightly and block awareness of feelings. This is a form of control. So our first task is to relax, to stop holding. It may seem we have no control over it and that it is happening to us without any way for us to stop it. We feel chronic tension somewhere in the body that does not let go or we may be unaware of any tension. We must understand and acknowledge that it is us, our fear, that creates that tension. We must become conscious of how we are living and holding ourselves, how we are adapting, how we are protecting ourselves, how we are denying or suppressing our free expression. Our attention must be focused on our experience, not on our minds, not on our thoughts, but what is really happening in this moment. Am I tense? Am I relaxed? Do I have tension, blocks or holding? Do I feel peace and energy flowing? What is really happening in me right now? Not what am I thinking – but what am I experiencing?

By the very act of becoming conscious of what we are experiencing, we begin to deepen our experience. If we are lucky we perceive the fear. But we may not be so lucky. We may only perceive discomfort or tension, holding, blocks or any variety of experiences. As we keep focusing our attention on our experience, it will begin to relax. As we become aware of what we are holding we can make the choice to let go. We may not always release, but we need not judge or become anxious and decide that something is wrong or that we are not good enough. There is no room for judgment. It is simply becoming present.

With wholehearted attention on what is real in this moment, fear can be dissolved in an instant, our resistance can be dissolved in an instant. With our acceptance of what is, just as it is, with no judgment, we become present to what is truly real, what is permanent, what is unchanging. As we surrender, we will experience more blocks and more fear, more resistance. Our task is to stay focused. We are not doing anything but reminding ourselves to stay focused. Moving from a state of fear to trust and openness, is not an act of doing – it is an act of allowing – of stopping what we were doing and allowing what already is to be revealed. We do not force it, make it, create it, activate it or anything. It is all already true. We are simply stopping our blocking reality from our awareness, which we do by staying focused on what is, what is real right now. This is our task.

When we need to, we remind ourselves of the truth. We remind ourselves that we are just pure consciousness and form and matter are effects of consciousness. That consciousness is one true power. That consciousness is all there is, infinite and eternal. Which means it has no end, no beginning, and no limit. It is all there is. Our lives, our material world, all takes place within consciousness – never outside of consciousness. We are never outside of consciousness, never separate, never alone, never deprived of consciousness.

The power of the universal divine intelligence is expressing as us, the power of love creating life. That is the truth of who we are. Once again, an infinite, eternal, divine intelligence, consciousness, expressing in form, in us, the power of love, creating this energy called life, the life force – that is who we are. That is what is revealed when we stop. We move from fear to truth. Let yourself give in to the truth. Allow the truth to be revealed to you. It is there. It is here now. It is real. It is always here, always alive within you, always giving you life. Say “yes” to it.

Consider this: in this moment you could experience serene calm and peace. You could experience divine light and grace. You could experience a sense of oneness and wholeness, a deep knowing of the fundamental beauty and richness of life. And this is what lies within you, lies at the very core of your being, the source of your life right now. This could be your experience in this moment. If it is not your experience, most likely you are identified and aligned with the identity and struggling to be free of it.

For most of us who are listening to or reading this meditation, the identity is like an old friend or family member that we have outgrown. This person has a particular trait which is to continuously talk, and even if we feel we have something to say we get no attention from them. They just continue to talk to us. This has been going on in our lives for so long that we don’t even notice. But at some point, we finally realize we don’t want to listen to this anymore. And the only way out is to turn away and walk away.

That is the only way out of the identity – we must turn our attention away from it and look at, see, hear, and listen for a whole different experience. When we are aligned and captivated by the identity we believe that there are things wrong, there are things that need to be fixed, that need to be done, that have to change. We believe all kinds of things.

When we turn away from the identity, we can stop trying to change anything and stop trying to fix anything. Now we are going to fix our minds on truth. This is how we silence the identity, how we put an end to duality, for only in the realm of duality can there be things wrong or bad, or any ideas that we fall short, are not good enough, or are not worthy. We can let all those ideas dissolve in the light. We cannot get rid of the darkness with other darkness. We can only get rid of it with light. We cannot get rid of a faulty belief with a new belief that is as dualistic as the old belief.

So we turn away from the endless stream of judgments, noise, and we acknowledge the truth. We deny all ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, and know that there only is what there is – an expression of the one true power. There only is the one true source. Everything, absolutely everything, originates from this one perfect source. Nothing is outside of it. Nothing can oppose it. Nothing can corrupt it. There cannot possibly be anything bad or wrong. We cannot let our identity distract us from this truth. We cannot go along with the identity in any way. For the moment we believe in duality, we are separated from the truth and the illusion and the dream of duality.

If we have symptoms or illness, if we have lack or poverty, if we have depression or unhappiness, if we have failure in our lives, this is not the work of God. It is the work of our identity. God cannot create suffering. Only we can do that. We have tremendous power at our disposal that we mostly use to punish ourselves. We use the creative power of the universe to limit ourselves, to make our lives hard, to punish ourselves. We will not be judged for this. There is no blame or shame. For we will see our own perfection one day and know there never ever was anything wrong, never was anything bad, never was any failure or mistake. Life is not capable of mistakes. Life is only capable of living – the creative power evolving and expanding, every entity a unique expression, completely individual, unlike any other expression. There cannot be any mistakes because there are no rules, no expectations. There is only the spontaneous expression of Life in this moment.

So the source of all our struggle, unhappiness, and suffering, is our idea that we should be any different than we are. Our efforts to control result from that idea. If we truly, deeply, fully acknowledged our own perfection, our own divine nature, the presence of God as us, we would be free.

And so we must walk away from the endless monotony of the identity and listen to God within us. We must choose to set our minds on the truth. We must break the spell of the identity and walk away. The identity has no power but that which we give it. We can stop now. There is nothing to do. For we know the truth of our own divine nature. We know that this truth is the only power there is. Even though we may be distracted, that does not change the truth. Nothing changes the truth. Nothing changes what is true about us in this moment. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves imperfect, to make ourselves bad or wrong, failures or unworthy. It is not possible. So we can give in, we can stop and say “yes” to the truth.

Although it doesn’t seem rational or logical, most of us prefer discomfort, struggle and belief in limitation to the uncertainty of surrender.  We prefer to be in control, even though we are clearly beginning to understand the negative consequences of being in control.  Control is still our choice by default.  We have all seen the child who prefers to do something herself even though it leads to tears and failure.  We have been conditioned to believe that we must be able to make it on our own – that we must be prepared for independent action.   We think it is a question of honor, survival and integrity to look after ourselves on our own.

In truth there is nothing to judge, label wrong, or consider as a failure or inadequacy.  It’s just the way it is.  The journey has come to this point.  There will come a time when we will choose surrender over control, and we will be most comfortable with trusting and allowing.  Then we will wonder how we could have put up with so much struggle for no reason.  For some of us that time may not come until it is time to give up the physical body.  In the end it really doesn’t matter when we do it, because the moment we do, we enter into the infinite, timeless space where the past doesn’t matter.

As we sit here now we are faced with the choice.  We may long for surrender, long for love, long for the peace and freedom of simply and authentically being ourselves, but we are attached to our identity and to what appears to be right and wrong and good and bad.  We are driven by our need to fit in; we feel pressure to stay in control.  There are a million reasons not to trust.  If we are honest and open with ourselves, we can find many ways that we refuse to trust – many reasons that we are attached to.  Perhaps we believe we must control our body, we must control our health, we must control what we say and do, we must be productive, we must accomplish.  The list goes on and on.

In the meantime love has no expectation of us whatsoever.  Love has no judgment and no time frame.  It just is.  We live in a whole universe, complex and enormous beyond the scope of the human imagination, built out of love, out of nothing – infinite in magnitude, infinitely microscopic, and infinitely huge with no end. This is the power of love.  This is the power we refuse to give in to.  We choose to be in control.  We choose the certainty of struggle and limitation.  We say no to the power that creates beyond our ability to understand.

So in this moment, be aware of your choice.  Acknowledge and recognize the truth of your choice whether it is conscious or unconscious.  There is no power pushing you in one direction or the other.  It is all happening within you.  Recognize and take responsibility for your choice to use control and limitation out of fear, and become conscious of the power you are denying.  You can say, yes, I know I am saying no to unlimited possibility and potential.  I recognize I am saying no  to unconditional love and infinite peace and freedom and I see that somewhere in me is a fear that believes I am better off in control and limitation.  I know that is true; I am becoming conscious and aware.

There is no need to judge, compare, or think it should be any way other than it is.  The profound moment is the moment we acknowledge the truth just as it is in this moment without judgment or expectation that it should be any different.  We just become open to the truth.  We need no longer pretend that anything is true but that which exists in this moment.  This life is not a competition.  It is not a race for enlightenment or a measure of our worth.  Nothing is better than any other.  Surrendering to the truth is not good.  Being attached to limitation is not bad.  In our most profound moments change occurs when we completely and totally accept what is, no matter what it is.  Then we are free.

Your mind, your ego and your identity, all have different views.  They think you should be better.  They think some things are better than others.  They think some things aren’t good enough.  There is no truth in these ideas and beliefs.  You can choose to let go of the pressure to be anything other than what you are in this moment.  You can choose to let go of all the ways you have believed you are not good enough – all the ways you think there is something wrong with you.  Claim the truth that all there is, is God – that everything about you is God and that everything about you that you judge is a judgment of God.

Will you proclaim the failure of God – the failure of the power that creates this universe from nothing in this very moment somehow got it wrong with you?  Will you proclaim that the power behind a million miracles, awe-inspiring beauty and profound magnificence is flawed in you?  Is this what you will proclaim?  Your ability to believe such an idea, to choose a story that is not true, is because of the gift of your imagination.  You have, in a remarkable evolutionary leap, the ability to imagine that which does not exist and then to believe in it.  Or perhaps, this is the very process by which the universe was created – to imagine something that doesn’t exist and then believe in it.

We are like children learning to use tools.  Often as we learn we hurt ourselves by using them incorrectly or because they are too powerful for us.   We have the power of imagination and mostly we use it to create limitation.  Let us be conscious of how we use our imagination.  Let us free ourselves now of any non-acceptance or any judgment and instead dwell in the truth, the truth of our perfection – the truth of the divine source of our being.  We can let go now.  We can give up.

What does it mean to come to a stop, to move to a state of allowing?  You may think when we are sitting in meditation that we have come to a stop because we are not moving, but what we are really talking about is stillness and quiet.  We can actually have stillness and quiet and move at the same time.  The stillness we are looking for is the silence of the mind, the relaxation of the body, the surrender of control.  We may not be aware of how active we are even when sitting still; our mind is processing, going over problems either from the past or the future, figuring, calculating, ruminating.  Our body may be in survival mode, there may be tension and holding, we may be holding ourselves tightly.

The metaphor of dying is used often in spiritual traditions to describe the process of letting go of our identity, giving up being anything that we think and just being what we are.  While we are listening to our mind, we are distracted from what is real.  If we are afraid to be without our identity, we are afraid to die.  We believe that our identity fills in the darkness and blackness of nothingness.  We look to our identity to comfort ourselves from feeling that we are nothing.  The reality is that the identity is nothing; it is only an idea in our mind and has no reality at all.  There is nothing to it.  We cannot know who we are through thought.  We can only experience it.  We cannot experience it while we are distracted.

Giving up the identity, dying to ourselves, does not mean the end and does not mean nothingness or blackness.  It is the beginning.  It is the experience of truth and light, of richness, beauty, depth and authenticity.  We lose nothing when we die to ourselves.  We fear a letting go because we made a decision that what was in us was bad or unsafe, dangerous, uncontrolled – based on the response of those around us to our free expression.  We are afraid of our own spontaneity, our own creative ability, our own free expression.  We are afraid of our uniqueness, our difference, our own special qualities.  Yet that is where the fullness of life will be experienced – the depth of love, the exhilaration of connection, oneness and authentic self-expression.

So we must understand and recognize that our fear is from the past and does not represent reality.  We can turn that fear to excitement, to anticipation of the rewards of authenticity, knowing who we truly are, of being just who we are.  There is nothing wrong with us.  There is nothing bad in us, nothing broken.  There is power in us, creative power and intelligence, love and light.  There is freedom and there is peace.  There is a deep knowing of our oneness.  This is what we fear.  This is what we die to.  We do not need to do anything to make this real; it already is.  It is real in its complete fullness whether you are aware of it or not.  Say yes now, yes to quiet, yes to stillness, yes to what is real.

Most of us have times when we feel like there is an energy or a force insisting that something is wrong, and this makes it difficult to think thoughts of truth because the mind immediately runs to what is wrong.  Our body will not relax; our mind will not stop.  This is survival mode.  It is our physical body preparing for emergency.  When there is a threat to our lives this is an appropriate response.  But what has evoked it in this moment?  We may be conscious of what we perceive as a threat:  financial issues, health issues or relationship issues.  But in reality, are they a threat to our survival?  It is more likely that the emergency our physical body is responding to is within us.  Our natural desire for freedom of expression – to be free and to live fully, to express ourselves with liberty – that natural desire is triggering the state of emergency.

Our mind and our unconscious processes have become conditioned to perceive our free expression as a threat – as indeed they seemed in our younger years, when events or circumstances seemed to be placing extreme limits on us.  It is natural that a desire to break through those limits – to break through any limits to our freedom – will arise within us, causing our minds to create a state of fear and from that look to the outside world for the source of this fear.  So we must find a way to soothe the fears, to move out of the state of emergency, to recognize the reality of the moment, so that we can become creative again.

We must acknowledge our fear: a conditioned response to the presence of life within us, of expressing ourselves in whatever way we choose in any given moment.

We must become the soothing and nurturing parent to the frustrated and frightened child.  For we have been in the role of the controlling and judgmental parent which has been our most automatic response to this free child.  As we acknowledge the fear, we can then bring the compassion and empathy that changes our energy completely.  For then we are available to this moment, to what is truly real.  And then we can see there is no emergency.

The energy and presence of life is still alive within us.  We can remember that that energy, that force, is the living expression of the one universal source.  Our journey is one of unfolding.  We are not trapped.  We are not stuck.  We are not blocked.  Below all the stories, ideas and fears is the truth, unchanged and unchanging, always true, always the source of our being, always giving us life, always seeking expansion and expression, never missing, never compromised, giving us life right now.

Now is the time to drop all illusions –the idea that there are any problems, that there is anything wrong – anything at all. There is a state of being within you right now that knows only perfection, peace, joy, and love.  That is the truly authentic state of being.  The only thing stopping you from experiencing that state of being right now is your insistence that there is something wrong, there is something not good enough, there is something to be afraid of, something to worry about – whatever kinds of thoughts fill your mind in this moment to obscure your experience of the truth.  Just as clouds do not actually stop the sun from shining, our thoughts do not stop the light within us.  Our mind simply clouds the view and makes it seem like there is darkness.  But the light is already there right now.  You cannot find it with your mind.  You cannot think it into existence – it already exists.  It’s already burning brightly.  It’s already the source of your existence, the very basis of your being.

You are in charge of your thoughts, what fills your mind, what you pay attention to.  Now is the time to align your mind with the truth and remember that thoughts – paying attention to the mind – is like seeing only the clouds even if the light is shining on you.   For the light is shining all the time.  Thoughts are one kind of experience and the truth is another kind.  They are not the same.  Experience of the truth is revealed when we become quiet, when we soothe the mind, soothe ourselves, allow ourselves to know that everything is okay.  There is nothing wrong in this moment.  Nothing needs the attention of our mind.  We can relax – that’s all there is to do.  It is time to leave behind the distractions of the mind.  Allow the light to rush in, allow what is already real to come into your consciousness.  Simply let go and say yes to the undeniable, unchangeable, unavoidable truth, the only reality.  Wake up from the dream of separation, from the dream of struggle.  The full, creative, loving presence is in us right now.  There is nothing missing.

When we see evil as a power, we feel like we are fighting to remember the truth but are being opposed.  We feel that a force overtakes us.  We have become victims and we are identified with our egos, our thoughts, and our identity.  We are trying to reestablish control because we feel threatened.  We believe there is something wrong, that something needs to change, or something needs to be fixed.  What is wrong with us in this moment?  What is imperfect?  Our mind tells us that we are not surrendered enough, we are not this or that.  It produces a list of things that need to be fixed so we can surrender.  But the answer is not to work with what is wrong to overcome resistance.  The answer is to remember what is true in this moment and to deny the reality of any appearance of anything other than God.

The mind insists on control.  It wants to be in charge.  It wants to limit and contain our experience.  It wants us to behave.  Our spirit forever seeks expansion, expression, evolution, and freedom.  Our mind opposes this.  It frightens us.  It tells us that this urge within us is dangerous and we must shut it down.  So the battle rages in our body.  The natural impulse of life is seeking full expression and freedom to be, but the mind is instilling fear, demanding control, and insisting that there is something wrong that can only can be taken care of by the mind.  But we are not victims of our minds.  We are the choosers of what to fill our minds with.  We have the power to affirm and assert the truth, to remember that all is well.

Our mind is not the source of truth.  Our mind is a tool.  Our mind is not power.  Our thoughts are not real.  What will you proclaim in this moment: that there is something wrong or that God is real?  What will you live in this moment: the truth or the fear?  This is your choice right now.  If there is fear in you it will be replaced by love if you will stop and trust.  You, as your identity, as your ego, cannot control anything.  You are simply distracting yourself from the truth.  Your idea that there is something wrong that you can fix is a distraction.  Everything is already perfect.  There is nothing you can do except to choose to know it.  There is an intelligence and wisdom, a love, and a power within you that is infinite, enduring, and not overcome in any way by anything.  But if you choose the path of your mind, the path of your thoughts, then you cannot experience this truth.  You are then locked in the jail of your own identity.

The door is open.  Surrendering is a choice.  What you pay attention to is a choice.  What we fill our minds with is a choice.  We do not need to do anything to make the world perfect.  It already is.  We do not need to do anything to make ourselves perfect.  We already are.  It is only our insistence that there is something wrong that makes it seem so.  But it is false.  It is illusion.  It is imagination.  When you refuse to go along with the mind’s fear and denial of beauty, the love and light is here right now.  There is nothing that you have to do to create this power, this light.  It is alive within you this very moment.  It has never been extinguished.  It cannot be.  There can be no other truth about you.  What will you choose in this moment: the truth or darkness, love or fear?  You really do have that choice right now.

When circumstances in our life are presenting challenges that clearly require us to grow and expand, our first response is often to try to deal with these challenges in ways that are already familiar and comfortable; to do things that we already know how to do.  But when we are committed to growth and open to the idea of surrender, the challenges we encounter are not easily dealt with in our old ways.  In truth, we search our minds and our customary beliefs and ideas for a way to make sense of what is happening, but we cannot make it fit.  A state of confusion arises.  We feel we are out of our depth and feel all kinds of feelings: inadequacy, failure, or despair.

The underlying cause of this confusion is that we are looking in the wrong place for the answers.  The answer does not lie in our old forms of control, our learned behaviors, our conditioning; these are what we are trying to give up.  The answer lies in surrender – giving in – to the true intelligence and power, and being guided that way.  Our journey demands that we trust more and more.  It is a journey of unfolding, of becoming.  Doing things the same old way becomes an impediment, becomes uncomfortable and brings constant challenge to that way of being.

And so we must remind ourselves, on a moment–to-moment basis, of the truth.  We cannot let our mind be occupied by thoughts of duality, of inadequacy, of failure, of any belief that there is anything wrong or bad.  When we do not know the answer we have to trust.  We must give the question to the intelligence and power within us that is infinite – that is the only truth in every moment.  That is our way; that is our path.  Though it may be difficult in the midst of confusion to remember the truth, that is our task in this moment – right now: to align our thoughts and mind with ideas of the truth, with our understanding of the one power, the unity of existence, the eternal and infinite presence of God and love, the substance of life, the source of all existence.  We do not exist outside of love, or beside it, or in opposition to it – there is no such thing.  It is up to us to bring our minds into harmony and alignment with the truth.  Then our path is clear, our journey is peaceful, our hearts will open and we will experience the beauty and the love that is here right now.  That is the only reality.