And it invites taking up the task willingly by seeing everything that happens thereafter as a possible part of the experiment. That to me is playing without reservation, without holding back.
If the guys in the rafters want to know how a certain experience or a certain energy will go down, I can imagine them calling on those whom they know are willing to try the matter on, test it out, and report back. Kinda like a galactic focus group.
With that in mind, I’ve gone through or am going through my second somewhat-rapid mood shift. I see myself as possibly being given this experience of rapid mood shift for some worthwhile purpose. I’m happy to go with it, if you are.
Yesterday, I think it was, I was gripped by a take-charge attitude. Then that mood disappeared.
Today I’m gripped by a yearning for “clear and certain knowledge.” Those are not my words. Those are words that appeared in my mind, which I willingly take up and explore. I think of it as “being guided.” It doesn’t replace the need for me to exercise discernment or take personal responsibility for my choices.
The request for clear and certain knowledge I interpret as what historically has been called the “longing for liberation” (search on the term, in quotation marks, on the site). The clear and certain knowledge being pointed to is synonymous for me with the state achieved upon enlightenment.
I don’t think one has to give up things forever to have clear and certain knowledge. But, in my opinion, there comes a moment when a person might give up everything completely, for that moment. And in that moment, in that open space, Self-realization can occur – I speculate. I’m not enlightened so I don’t know.
I’m close to giving up everything however. Precious little attracts me any more.
I go into meditation.
My new take-charge attitude helps me deepen in meditation. I take charge of myself, the only one I can rightfully take charge of. I’m not tolerating defeatism in me. I can do this.
As I sink deeper and deeper, drawing on my reawakened will, I see two paths presenting themselves to me.
The first is to use my will to solve one problem after another, climbing slowly out of the pit that we dig for ourselves by leaving behind everything I can identify as a residue of Third Dimensionality – self-importance, “us against them” competition, Darwinian survivalism, denseness, callousness, protectiveness, and so on. This is a very slow but certain route.
The second is to use my reawakened will to surrender my will to God’s. This is the direct and simplest way to achieve balance, calmness, right alignment, etc. This is a very fast route, but full of potholes on the road
It can be subverted by self-importance and rhetoric, without the one doing it being aware of it. We’re seldom aware that our awareness is decreasing or has decreased. We slide down the slippery slope of self-importance, largely unaware that we’re doing so, until the damage is done.
It truly is the strait and narrow path, the razor’s edge.
I have to risk it. The needs of the moment demand it. I have less and less wiggle room as time goes on and major responsibilities loom. I’m more and more constrained.
To surrender the will to God is, I think, the mystical meaning of St. Paul’s teaching:
“And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (1)
When the Self, Christ or Atman is realized, and all desires are subsumed in the one desire for God, then shall the Self – the firebrand plucked from the burning – bend the knee to God in surrender, that the all-creating, all-preserving, and all-consuming God may be All in all.
The purpose of illusory, separative life – that God should meet God in a moment of our enlightenment – has been accomplished. The first-born Son or Self or Atman came out into the world and realized itself as God, providing God with a moment of delight, and then left the world and returned to God. In the end, the Self surrendered itself to the All-Self.
The act of surrendering my all to God – or any part of it – is therefore a dress rehearsal for this supreme moment of illusory, separative life, the key moment in the dream – when the sleeper awakens to his or her Oneness with the All That Is.
Why would I not therefore practice surrender? Why would I not surrender to God every moment of every day, to prepare for the climactic event of all my lives?
Immediately up come all the protests I use to keep myself separate from God. I like being separate. I’m happy experiencing bliss and enjoying life in this realm. I’ve worked hard. I now want a rest.
And I realize that surrendering my will is the only safe and prudent thing to do in the situation. Nothing else will work. The ego is too wild a bronco for me to ride to submission. It’ll find one way or another to resume control of my will, unless I’m vigilant.
I don’t say I surrender to God out of religious zeal or a desire to impress, but out of careful choice after due consideration of all the evidence, gathered over 70 years.
In this moment, Lord, I bend the knee to you. Everything that you entrusted to me, I give back to you with love and – I hope you’ll find – ample interest.
Everything I’ve been, everything I’ve had, and everything I’ve done I give back to you. I retain nothing for myself but thy love.
I’ve stumbled on the approach that works for me, monk at heart that I am: Give everything back to God except his love and only act as you discern he wills.
Archangel Michael made it easy: Is this of love? That’s all we need to ask. But wow. What an assignment!
In its pure form, this is called the path of detachment but it’s also the path of service. Every path takes us a part of the way, I think, or has a part of the total answer.
Cutting the ties that bind seems the most important thing for me to do right now and giving back the gain to God. Tomorrow a different path may open up and lead through what seems at this moment to be the impassable.
I have the clear and certain knowledge that I’ve found the right approach for me. The bliss I feel supports that conclusion.
Footnotes
(1) 1 Corinthians 15:28.