When it comes to your search for God it can be one thing to say that you surrender to Him, quite another to truly let it all go and lay everything at His feet. It is common to hear someone complain to God, “I don’t like this, and I don’t like that!” But complaining is not surrender, rather it is often the very essence of attachment—an ongoing negotiation with God about what is not right with the world and how it should be different.
In a seeming contrast to surrender, Sri Yukteswarji, then through Master and Mother, very clearly knew that the most powerful way to invoke the creative power of God was not to go to him as a beggar, “Oh Lord, I am a most miserable sinner, and while I do not deserve this, will you give me____. Rather, the Master thought only of going to God as a rightful heir, each claiming his or her lawful inheritance, “Lord, I am made in Your likeness and image. I now claim my natural state of abundance, perfect health, and total realization.”
What do these two approaches have in common? In both, total surrender and through prayer-demand, you know that you are not outside the window looking into the banquet of God, rather you are at the table of the Infinite as one of the sacred family. In both, God is not some distant personality to whom you beg a few crumbs or to stand in abject misery of separation—rather, right attitude heals the breach, you merge your little self with God’s great Self.
This is the measurement by which you may know that you have perfectly surrendered or that you have attained the right state of mind in prayer-demand—you feel deeply connected with the omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent Spirit in and around you. You may work to achieve these states by practicing surrender and affirming prayer-demands, but there is a qualitative shift that occurs when you quit being on the outside and you find yourself a full member at God’s table.
There was the night Mother Mary was visited by an angel, telling her she would bear a child, a holy child. There must have been so many thoughts that came into her mind. First, how was such a thing possible since she had never been with a man? Then, there were very real consequences: the shame of being pregnant and not being married, the dire law and she could be shunned by her family, rejected by her fiancé, even stoned to death! With all this hanging over her head she surrendered to God’s will: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.” (Luke 1:38)
Such perfect surrender gives peace, inner assurance and strength. It does not mean that everything is going to go perfectly smoothly. As it is told, the birth of Jesus is filled with horror as soldiers are sent to kill the infant, and the little family has to flee to the distant country of Egypt to save their lives. However, inner direction led them to safety, it also took them home when the time was right, and it sustained them with strength and needed abundance throughout it all.
Whether claiming your right as a lawful recipient of all that is God’s or being in complete surrender to His will, let your heart be at peace; feel the Divine Presence full to overflowing within and without. The life of Jesus is replete with examples of manifesting God’s will for healing and abundance, and also accepting what is, in total surrender to the Supreme One’s will—each according to its own season. May this sacred time of celebrating the birth of Christ-consciousness into the world and into the human frame strengthen your resolve to be in seamless union with the ever-perfect Light of your Heavenly Father and Divine Mother.