Who you are is not what you did.
Surrender
To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. Inner resistance is to say “no” to what is, through mental judgment and emotional negativity. It becomes particularly pronounced when things “go wrong,” which means that there is a gap between the demands or rigid expectations of your mind and what is. That is the pain gap. If you have lived long enough, you will know that things “go wrong” quite often. It is precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.
Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation. In fact, it is not the overall situation that you need to accept when you surrender, but just the tiny segment called the Now. For example, if you were stuck in the mud somewhere, you wouldn’t say: “Okay, I resign myself to being stuck in the mud.” Resignation is not surrender. You don’t need to accept an undesirable or unpleasant life situation. Nor do you need to deceive yourself and say that there is nothing wrong with being stuck in the mud. No. You recognize fully that you want to get out of it. You then narrow your attention down to the present moment without mentally labeling it in any way. This means that there is no judgment of the Now. Therefore, there is no resistance, no emotional negativity. You accept the “isness” of this moment. Then you take action and do all that you can to get out of the mud. Such action I call positive action. It is far more effective than negative action, which arises out of anger, despair, or frustration. Until you achieve the desired result, you continue to practice surrender by refraining from labeling the Now.
Let me give you a visual analogy to illustrate the point I am making. You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.
Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as does the need to compete and dominate. Even nature becomes your enemy and your perceptions and interpretations are governed by fear. The mental disease that we call paranoia is only a slightly more acute form of this normal but dysfunctional state of consciousness.
Not only your psychological form but also your physical form — your body — becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole contracts. The free flow of life energy through the body, which is essential for its healthy functioning, is greatly restricted. Bodywork and certain forms of physical therapy can be helpful in restoring this flow, but unless you practice surrender in your everyday life, those things can only give temporary symptom relief since the cause — the resistance pattern — has not been dissolved.
There is something within you that remains unaffected by the transient circumstances that make up your life situation, and only through surrender do you have access to it. It is your life, your very Being — which exists eternally in the timeless realm of the present. Finding this life is “the one thing that is needed” that Jesus talked about.
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now
The challenges of life- do we convert them into unhappiness? Or do we go with them and do what must be done? All these things are wonderful that they happened to you because they brought about your awakening! Especially the bad things they pushed you into awakening.
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
You are not just a drop in the ocean. You are the mighty ocean in a drop.”
~ Rumi
“You are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while. Each person’s life – each lifeform, in fact – represents a unique way in which the universe experiences itself.
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“Outwardly, I am one apple among many. Inwardly, I am the tree.
You are the big bang, the original force of the universe. You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
The real YOU is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real, deep down YOU is the whole universe.
You are the universe experiencing itself.”
~ Alan Watts
“The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become.
You have potential powers beyond your wildest dreams. Not only is the entire universe reflected in you, but also the power to control the universe is waiting to be used.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
“You are not alone as a person, you are alone as the entire universe.”
~ Mooji
“Suddenly I was thrown into this expansive amazing feeling of freedom – from myself, from my problems. I saw that I am bigger than what I do, bigger than my body. I am everything and everyone. I am no longer a fragment of the universe. I am the universe.”
~ Jim Carrey
“Though the eye is small, the consciousness which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.”
~ Meher Baba
“When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, ‘Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing.’ These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. In the world of the wave, the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad as she falls. She may think ‘I am high!’ or ‘I am low!’ and develop superiority or inferiority complexes, but when the wave touches her true nature – which is water – all of her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.
Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“The whole universe is I-am. So whenever I say “I am choiceless, effortless, pure awareness, I am the Self”, always remember, I am not referring to Robert. I’m referring to I-am, which is pure consciousness. When I make that confession, it is all-pervading. It is omnipresence itself. Everyone of you is I-am. The whole universe is I-am.
How can you want anything when you are the whole universe?
All the answers are within you. Everything you’re looking for is within you, everything. Know who you are. You are the power. All the power of the universe is within you. All is well, exceedingly well. It has always been well, it will always be well.
I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. The reality in back of the universe is pure awareness. It has no problems. And you are That.”
~ Robert Adams
Thanks to Simon Bartholomé
The egoic sense of self needs conflict
because its sense of a separate identity
gets strengthened in fighting against
this or that, and in demonstrating
that this is “me” and this
is not “me”.
Eckhart Tolle
its sense of a separate identity
gets strengthened in fighting against
this or that, and in demonstrating
that this is “me” and this
is not “me”.
Eckhart Tolle
Built into the very structure of the
egoic self is a need to oppose, resist,
and exclude to maintain the sense of
separateness on which its continued
survival depends. So there is “me”
against the “other,” “us”
against “them”.
Eckhart Tolle
They are looking outside
for scrapes of pleasure or
fulfillment, for validation,
security, or love, while they
have a treasure within that
not only includes all those
things but is infinitely
greater than anything
the world can offer.
Eckhart Tolle
