Picture: Mother–A perfect blend of will and surrender (circa 1967)
Mother spoke powerfully about two seemingly opposite means of dealing with life’s problems. One is to use your God-tuned will, as she effectively did, in order to overcome tremendous obstacles, and the second is to surrender to God’s will at all times. So which do you do, fight or surrender?
Confusion comes from the word surrender. Many associate surrender with defeat, this is not what is intended when it comes to your sadhana, your spiritual practice. Surrender to God means you are first attuning your mind to God’s Mind; if there is a difference between your will and God’s, then you go with what God is directing you to do rather than your own inclination.
For instance, lower impulses make you feel that your mind is being drawn away from God. You know the limiting, tortured feelings that come from following these desires. Like a honey trap you are drawn by the cloying sweet sensations inside the trap, but once you enter in you are encaged. God-experience frees you from the trap, but you must clearly choose God over sweet deadly promises.
You may have fear concerning some experience coming your way. Fear disconnects you from God, it builds fear upon fear and will dominate your life; it makes you think of the worst scenarios and you feel helplessly caught. The fact that you are made in the likeness and image of pure transcendent God-consciousness is completely obliterated by the fog of fear.
Surrender to God means you use your powerful will to focus your mind upon God, not the images of fear. You affirm that God is at the core of your being; it is His Light, courage, strength, mirthful-joy and love that act as angel’s wings to lift you above the clouds of doubt and enclosing fear. You concentrate on the truth that God knows whether a sparrow falls, and He has counted the hairs on your head (Matt. 10; 29-30); in other words there is not a single thing that occurs in this wide world that is beyond the knowledge and care of its Creator.
Currently I am waiting to hear back on the results of the biopsy taken on Thursday. In the waiting I have a choice on what to focus my mind; the possibility of tumor growth, or upon God. I know that God is aware of my preference for the test results. I affirm and I think only of having perfect health. I also am surrendered to His will, asking that all be accomplished for the higher Good of all. For me this is the larger purpose in life; the higher Good is more important than my own preference. Many times there is no difference between my preference and what is for the higher Good, but then sometimes there is. When there is a difference, I surrender to God’s wisdom.
So, in the waiting I feel I am God’s child, totally surrendered to His will. I also think only of perfect health; my body is filled through and through with His Light, all the cells shining in His perfection. No matter the results of this biopsy I will continue this thought of perfection, for it brings me into His Holy Presence in body, mind and Spirit.
I also behold that same Light in you, for it adds prayerful thought-energy to your perfection in Him. Not only is this thought of perfection best for your spiritual health, it also enacts the highest principle for superior physical health as well. In this way you use both surrender to God and your powerful will to lift you closer to God; enabling perfect health and giving you peaceful joy!