RUMI

Cada árbol y cada planta del prado
parece estar danzando;
aquéllos con ojos comunes
sólo los verán fijos e inmóviles.

25 abr 2014

Surrender and Control

Dear friends,
I speak to you from the heart of Christ consciousness. I am Jeshua, but I am not solely that one particular personality who lived on earth two thousand years ago. Here, I represent more than that. I represent the Christ energy that lives and vibrates in all of your hearts. The one who speaks here now thus also represents your own energy and vibration; it is your own heart-felt longing that is turned into words in this room we are sitting in.
Being together like this, is not simply about delivering a lecture….it is a gathering and celebration of the New Era. The awakening of a new consciousness seems to be far off at times. There seems to be so much disharmony and conflict in your world and, indeed, within yourselves as well. But yet the awakening has begun. A new dimension of consciousness is being birthed on earth right now, and after a long stage of preparation, it will gradually gain a foothold and spread a wave of enlightenment across the earth. You all take part in this wave of newly awakening consciousness, engulfing the earth right now. In many senses, you are that wave of energy.
“Surrender and control” is a big issue within this process of spiritual awakening, both at the individual level and at the collective level. At the political level, world leaders often find themselves confronted with this issue. It still is very difficult to be in charge politically and make decisions from the heart. Politics does not seem to be ready for this yet. Nonetheless, surrendering to the wisdom of the heart is the only way out of the great conflicts on earth right now, the only chance for a peaceful resolution of these conflicts.
The universal sense of connectedness and unity that is possible between people of very different races, religions or cultures, is the foundation for world peace. The recognition of each other as human beings, despite the external dissimilarities, is growing among the world population, and it is stimulated by your modern information technology, which greatly diminishes distances in time and space. At the same time, the growth towards mutual understanding is threatened by old, fear-based notions of “us” and “them”. Thinking in terms of good and bad, right and wrong, “us” and “them”, perpetuates age old hostilities and fuels a great deal of emotional turmoil. These divisive notions are still used by politicians to sustain their power.
However, what ultimately determines reality at the political level is you, the individual. Politics mirror the consciousness of the majority of individuals together. It is by the awareness of many independent individuals together that a new level of consciousness comes alive. Rather than dwell on the political level, I would now like to speak of the individual level, at which you are all working to integrate the energy of the heart into your lives and at which you are dealing with the issue of surrender and control.
Meanwhile I ask you to simply feel the energy of surrender, as it is gathered here today and flowing out of your hearts. You all strongly crave for the sense of liberation and trust that is inherent in surrender, letting go. But often, you do not know yet how to integrate this energy into your day to day lives.
What is the source of control in life? By control I mean: wanting to exert power over life, forcing it to flow according to your desires, which you perceive as right and just. Why do you mean to exert control over your life, and continually live in tension and anxiety because of it? The source of control is fear. Fear is deeply ingrained in the structure of your life: your upbringing, education and society. Control mechanisms are present everywhere and are taught to you as good habits. Apparently, you are a sensible, rational person if you want to have control over your life and organise it accordingly.
Surrender and unpredictability instil a sense of fear in you. Surrender you associate with giving up, not knowing what to do, being overwhelmed by emotional turmoil or crisis. This, however, is a very limited conception of surrender. It is a conception born from fear, from ego based consciousness. There is a much more positive notion of surrender, one that points at a lifestyle, a way of being, in which you live your life in trust, without the need to control, force or manipulate it.
The ego craves control because it is scared. The ego identifies with images that do not come from the soul but are fed to you from the outside world. The ego is constantly running around to preserve its self-image, be it successful businessman, caring housewife, or able therapist. It wants to keep up this image to have control over other people’s thoughts about you. However, there are always moments in which the ego fails and loses. This may be the case when you get overworked, sick or your relationship breaks down. The ego considers such crises, which at some point force you to let go and surrender, to be deathly blows.
The ego thus associates surrender with crisis. The ego lives in a continual alternation of control and crisis. Often, in moments of true crisis in your life, you are invited to look at the hidden treasure inside of it. There is always a positive element hiding within the crisis, which beckons you to get closer to the heart of you. In that way, life is always moving you closer to yourself, your inner knowing and wisdom, even if you live by the ego’s dictates. For there will always be situations in your life that challenge you to surrender sooner or later. Life is always offering you opportunities to choose surrender as a lifestyle.
You know this. You all know these moments of surrender after a crisis, precious moments of clarity and awareness, in which you realize you are carried by the flow of an invisible, divine breath. You realize this divine flow of life wants the best for you, and that you can rely on it even if it does not necessarily bring you what you expected. What you all long for is to live according to this higher consciousness more permanently; to incorporate this way of being into your everyday life, without having to be pushed into it by deep crisis and despair. You all long for surrender as a lifestyle.
You are all worn-out warriors. You have come a long way. Sometimes you feel very old and tired within, but it is better to say that you are very tired of the old…… You are searching for a way of being that is effortless – inspiring and yet light and flowing. The key is that you do not empty yourself out in your relationships, work or other goals, until you crash and crisis forces you to surrender. Take one step further, or rather take one step back, and focus on a lifestyle that is always marked by letting go, trust and surrender. Surrendering means: not struggling, not resisting but going along with the flow of life, trusting that life will offer you precisely what you need. Trust that your needs are known and will be met. Accept what is in your life right now and be present with it. About this way of living I wish to speak, as your longing for it is deep and sincere. It is a spiritual longing that comes from your soul, the divine flow within you.
Blockages on the way to surrender: three false gods
On the one hand, you desire to put down your masks and live openly according to the original blueprint of your soul. You long for sincerity, honesty, love and connectedness. On the other hand, letting down those masks is a very difficult thing for you. You have been raised with beliefs and structures that have become rooted in your psyches and that keep you from connecting to your own soul. In particular, I would like to address three idols or “false gods” that you often turn towards for guidance but which in fact take you off-center, out of the balance needed to live in surrender to who you really are.
The first idol: God as an authority above you
The first false god is God himself, that is to say God conceived as the lord and master of creation. That type of God is a human construction, an image of God that has deeply influenced your culture.
Many of you thinkthat you have let go of this traditional image of God. You say you do not believe anymore in a judging and punishing God, who stands high above you and keeps a record of your successes and failures like a school master. You say you believe in a God of Love, who forgives you at all times and who cherishes and encourages you. However, in the rigid and loveless way you often treat yourselves, this old God is still very much alive! Do you not often say to yourself that you have failed, that you are not right, that you should have progressed further, whether in the area of relationships, work, or the spiritual. You torture yourself with ideas like: I do not live up to God’s expectations, I am disappointing my spiritual guides or higher Self, I have failed my mission, I am not contributing anything meaningful to the world.
Many of you believe, secretly so to speak, that there is a higher order that you are supposed to answer or obey to. Whether it is a “soul mission” or a “life path” that has been laid out for you, a spiritual hierarchy that has an “assignment” for you, or a spiritual guide telling you what to do or where to go……in all those cases you believe in the existence of a higher authority, a spiritual level above you, that you had better listen to. But as soon as you believe in an authority outside of you, who is able to offer guidelines about what you should do in your life, we are back with the traditional God. According to this image, there is a level of truth, at which things are fixed and determined, and all you can do is live according to it or not. This is a false image.
Certainly, when you are born, there are intentions in your soul for the lifetime to come. One might call these your higher purpose for this lifetime, but it has not been ordained by anything outside of you. It is you yourself who has chosen it and it was born from your own desires and wishes. The things in your life that are “predetermined”- in the sense of very likely to happen, nothing is ever fixed completely - have been created and chosen by you. You can connect to your life purpose or higher inspiration anytime by listening to your feelings, to the voice of your heart, your deepest longings. I would advice you not to listen too much to high-strung spiritual doctrines about how you should live. Listen especially to the so-called lower part of you: powerful emotions that manifest in your everyday life. Through these emotions, the soul is trying to reach out to you and tell you something.
If you would like to know what your soul wants to tell you right now, look at the emotions that recur in your life often and absorb you the most. Look at them in a kind but honest way. Do not accuse anyone else of your emotions, do not pay attention to causes outside of you; see them as the result of your choices. For instance, if you are angry and annoyed often, where does that come from? Is there something you are lacking? What does the anger tell you? What is the message hidden within? Is it a sense of not being recognized or valued by others? Are you afraid to show them who you are, afraid to stand for your truth? Do you hide your true feelings often and is it difficult for you to clearly state your boundaries? Often, through the anger, a genuine message is crying out to you: a longing to be who you are, to show your original soul energy to the world. If you recognise your soul’s longing through the anger, you are seeing your angelic self shining through your inner child.
The angel inside of you is the “higher self” who wants to connect with physical reality, incarnate and shine its light upon earth reality. It is the knowing part. Your inner child is the passion of life itself: it is desire, emotion and creativity. It is the experiencing part. The child part in you is your “lower self”. The inner child is a source of joy and creativity, if it lives in harmony with the angel within. But if it breaks away from the angel’s caress and goes adrift, it is the source of emotions running wild. Anger will turn into hatred and vengeance. Fear will pervert into defence, neurosis and frustration. Sadness will deteriorate into depression and bitterness. The original emotions are pointers…messages from the experiencing part of you. It is the child that, through these emotions, reaches out its hands to the angel inside of you. The emotions express the pure, un-knowing experience. They are an expression of misunderstanding. It is in the connection to the angel that emotions can be picked up as pointers and understood. As such, the emotions become instruments for transformation and exploration: the “lower self” enriches and fulfils the higher self as it provides the knowing part with felt content. The angel in you comes to life and experiences deep joy if she is allowed to enlighten the child. And if the higher self shines through in this way, your emotional body quiets down and gains balance. The fruit of the flowing together of angel and child is an intuitive, inner knowing that can imbue your life with light and effortlessness.
The higher and lower principles in you, the angel and the child, are an organic, meaningful whole. The notions “higher” and “lower” therefore are not really right. It is about a joyful playing together of “knowing” and “experiencing”. It is this interplay that leads to true, incarnated (as opposed to theoretical) wisdom.
To find guidance about your life in the now moment, you can best address your inner child. By giving it the attention it needs, you shower it with your higher consciousness, the touch of the angel. To illustrate this, let’s return to the example above in which I spoke of anger and irritation. Once you have connected with this emotion and envisage it as a child, you can invite the child to come to you. You can ask it what it is upset about and what it needs from you to heal. Let the child answer you and allow it to express itself very clearly. Imagine it talking to you in a lively way, with a distinct expression on its face and clear body language. Perhaps it is giving you specific answers, such as “I want you to quit your job!” or “I want to take dancing lessons”, or they may be more general, like “I need to play and relax more” or “I can’t be nice all the time, you know!” Take the answer seriously and live according to it as much as possible. Maybe you cannot instantly do the things your inner child desires. But you can start small and step by step start to realize your longings.
If you embrace the angry, frightened or sad child inside of you with love and acceptance, it is touched by the angel inside of you and the result is that your soul speaks to you. Start with the emotions, find the true longing behind those emotions, and find a way to realize them step by step.
In the image I am drawing of the angel and the child within, there is no place for an authoritarian God figure. The “higher” and the “lower” complement each other in an open, dynamically evolving relationship. The angel does not dictate anything to the child, nor does the child have authority over the angel. It is in their interplay that you discover what is right for you in this moment.
You will find your life’s goals through this intimate connection between angel and child. In this connection, you discover what really moves you. No authority outside of you can replace this connection, or make the connection for you. A teacher can only point to that sacred area within, where you can allow the child inside to be cherished and inspired by the angel in you. In this area, you find out who you are and what your passion is. General guidelines about how to live a spiritual life are nearly always inadequate, or at least not universal in nature. Truth is formless. Every creature has its own form, its own way of living the Truth. That is the miracle of your unique soul essence. Real spiritual teachers do not teach specific do’s and don’ts, such as “do not eat meat” or “meditate two hours a day”. A real teacher knows that it is all about you finding your own truth, in deep communion with yourself. Teachers may indicate what has been helpful to them on their way, but they will not turn this into a rule or dogma.
If you take a look at the way God has been portrayed in most of your religious traditions, this is exactly what happened there. Most of them are traditions of fear and power abuse. The need for clear cut rules and dogma and the tendency toward hierarchic organisations always show that fear and power are at play. The same thing however also happens in new age spirituality. Take for instance the many predictions and speculative theories currently circulating. If you go along with this without consulting your own basic feelings about it, you may get insecure and start to wonder “am I doing things right?”, “what if I miss the boat (or spacecraft…) in 2012?” or “is the state of my chakras pure enough to enter 5th dimension?” This type of questions is certainly not helpful to your inner growth. I ask you: turn towards yourself. Do not focus on the movement of the planets and stars, the climate changes, or the judgement of an “ascended master” to determine your level of self realisation. You are the center of your universe, the standard and touch stone of your world. There is no God outside of you who knows better or who determines things for you. Not only does the God you formerly projected outside of you, reside in you, this God is not all-knowing either. The divine principle in you and all of creation is a playful force, growing and evolving in open and unpredictable ways.
In this image, the “lower” has an indubitable reason for existence: it is the fuel for growth and fulfilment. Light and dark have their own role to play and it is in the acceptance of both, that you get enlightened. Reaching out for the light in a one sided way, ignoring or fighting the dark, which some spiritual groups aspire, creates imbalance and a subtle resistance to (and contempt for) life on earth.
Doing things wrong, making mistakes, is all right and it may even bring you greater growth than trying to avoid mistakes. In the “bad things” the seed of light is dormant. Only by experiencing the bad from within, can you experience the good as beautiful, pure and true. You cannot learn “from without”. You, God inside of you, has plunged into the deep (into material reality) to become knowing through experience, not to apply knowledge to experience. In that sense, not many things are non-spiritual. All experience is sacred and meaningful. Do not let yourself be guided by outside rules, dictating what is healthy, right and spiritual for you to do. The touch stone is your own heart: if it feels right for you, then it is okay. Let go of anything else.
The second idol: the standards and ideals of society
Another false god which estranges you from your original soul energy is “society”: the standards and values which control your social world and are passed on to you through your upbringing, education and job environment. Many of society’s ideals are rooted in fear, in the need to control and structure life so that it becomes a neatly arranged playground. Many rules of behaviour are not so much inspired by what people truly feel and experience, but on what it looks like from the outside.
Trying to live up to such external standards of conduct can put a great pressure on you. Think of the fear of “not fitting in”, not having accomplished enough, not being beautiful enough, having no relationship, etcetera. By comparing yourself to unreal images of success and happiness, your creative energy gets stuck and you do not feel at home in this world anymore.
Because of all these do’s and don’ts, which have become like a second skin, you hardly dare to explore your original creativity. You are afraid to step outside the beaten track. But it is exactly this original soul energy, the energy which wants to flow uniquely from you, that is so welcome on earth! It is this part of you that is meant to bring about the transformation of consciousness on earth right now.
Connecting to your creative impulses and expressing them in your own unique way often demands that you deviate from society’s aims and ideals. It may be the case that your natural rhythm of exploring yourself and then expressing who you are on the material level, does not fit in with society’s schedule of how and when to achieve certain things in life. You may first go through a long process of getting to know yourself deeply, not achieving or producing anything on the outer level. While this may seem ineffective or unsuccessful to people, you may be working very hard on the inner level, discovering a lot of valuable things about yourself. Take your time to discover who you are, where your natural energy leads you, and to integrate it into your emotional and physical being. Do not pay attention to external success. Focus on what feels good and right to you, what makes you feel relaxed and inspired. If you find that way of living, and experience peace and quiet within, you will most easily get in touch with your original soul energy.
There is much fear in people about what society dictates and expects from them. The strange thing is that “society” as such does not even exist. What we have is a lot of people together, each with their own sincere longings and their deep-seated fears. Everyone longs to be free in the deepest sense of the word: to simply be who they are without fear of being judged by “the others”. Think again therefore, whenever you are paying a lot of attention to what others think of you. You are in fact becoming the others’ worst enemy too, since by abiding to their rules and fearing their judgment, you keep false ideals alive and suffocate the both of you even stronger. You become “society” to someone else.
Especially you, who are the pioneers of the New Era, can be an example to people who are caught in fear. You are that example when you truly stand by yourself, listen closely to your feelings, live accordingly and let go of outside judgments. These judgments are born from fear, not love, and they are often based on old rules and codes that no one remembers the true origin of. These old standards, which bear no connection to the human heart anymore, wait to be transformed from within, by people who dare to open up new vistas. Society waits for you; it waits for inspired ideals and standards that help people connect to their hearts and their true desires. You contribute to the collective transformation of consciousness by being an example of love instead of a follower of fear.
Dare to invite in the playful, childlike part of you. Get in touch with your inner child often: it knows very well what it wants. Often you can hardly sense what your heart truly longs for and you feel like you have lost your passion. This is because you do not let the inner child play, fantasize and dream anymore. When you measure yourself to external codes (what is appropriate for my age, gender, social background) you limit yourself and you do not allow the child, the dreamer and visionary, to take you outside of those limits and connect you to your “inner code”.
You were all born with an inspiration, a desire to manifest something on earth, both for yourself and for others (“society”). You have not come here to live in an ivory tower. You are part of collective consciousness on earth and you have come here to be a leader and inspirer of change. That will make you happy and fulfilled. By connecting to your inner child, and once again feel the magic of that original passion, illusory limits and boundaries will be lifted and you will find your way in life in a much easier and lighter way. The more you set yourself free from the false gods that keep you small and fearful, the more you live from a sense of freedom and surrender to the heart, and the more the universe will support you and provide you with the means necessary to bring your passion to fruition.
The third idol: pitying others and going along with their suffering
There is one other false god which I would like to mention and which perhaps preoccupies you the most in everyday life. It is pitying your fellows, sharing the burden with your dear ones by suffering along with them. Now, you may ask: how can that be an idol? Am I not supposed to connect with others, especially my loved ones, and help them if I can? What I am talking about is a tendency of yours to connect so deeply with people around you, that you are drawn into their pain, their problems and negative emotions and lose touch with your own core and inner peace. This kind of pity and co-suffering is not your duty, it is not helpful to the other person and it is not right from a spiritual standpoint.
Much of what you call “high sensitivity” is being so open to other people’s energy that it wipes away your own. Your empathy (i.e. the ability to feel other people’s moods and emotions) is in that case insufficiently balanced by the insight that the negative energies in that person belong to them and not to you. You are not realizing clearly enough that this negativity plays a viable role in the other person’s life and that you may enlighten them through your compassion and understanding, but that it does not serve anyone’s purpose if you suffer along with them.
Of course you would love to see your dear ones lead happy and fulfilling lives (whether it be spouse, child, parent or friend). You wish they would feel better and that their problems would be solved. Always remember though that the problems they have are their own creations. Relationship problems, money issues, health problems, psychological disorders….they all mirror deep-seated inner conflicts within the soul. Somewhere deep down people want to experience these problems, in order to get clear about something. It may seem that they are victims, especially when they are running around in circles over and over again. But often that means they still want to experience some aspect of that problem more thoroughly and that they are not open yet to your help. If you try to help them anyway, you will easily become pushy and controlling and you will exhaust your own energy sources. You then give up on surrender as a lifestyle.
By giving too much or inappropriately, you waste energy and you chain yourself emotionally to the one you are helping. This makes you dependent on the other person for your sense of well-being. Your emotional energies get mixed up and this is one of the major causes for loss of strength, vitality and self-awareness. Few things can break down your energy so easily as a persistent sense of duty, guilt and responsibility for someone else.
In such a “helping relationship” power issues often arise, even if no one intended this. By giving too much or inappropriately, the helper in fact tries to cover up an inner emptiness that goes unnoticed if one is preoccupied with someone else. Helping someone else may make you feel stronger and more self-assured. The one who gets all this attention from you, experiences this as nice and comfortable, and they soon notice they can influence you with their moods and emotions. They know that if things get worse for them, they get more attention from you (because you want them to get well so badly). The “sufferer” therefore senses that they have power over you and that it pays off to remain in the victim role. In such a relationship, a strong energy exchange is taking place, and it will drain the both of you, because it is not in alignment with what your souls really want. There is no spiritual truth in the way you are reducing each other to very limiting roles. The helper will eventually get frustrated because the sufferer will not progress enough: it is not in their interest to change, for they have invested in the victim role. And the sufferer gets even more stuck in their victim role; they dig themselves deeper into it, which may completely paralyse them. Both will get angry and blame one another.
You easily sympathize with and feel sorry for the people around you. Especially lightworker souls, who have a deep impulse to spread light and awareness on earth, are very sensitive to the suffering of others. It is hard for you to see suffering on a global scale, for instance in regions in the world devastated by poverty or war, or the destruction and pollution of the environment. But when it comes to suffering that is close to you, in your personal environment, you are affected most profoundly. And it is especially here that you are challenged to take back your power.
It is important to realize that you are not helping someone by making yourself smaller. You often think that if you absorb and swallow part of the other person’s emotions, you connect deeper to them and therefore help them. It is like you are sharing the burden. But by taking in the other one’s troubles, you only doublethe burden. The shadow deepens. By going along with the other person’s suffering, your power gets fragmentised and shattered by the negativity in them. You will think you are not entitled to be happy, peaceful and satisfied yourself, while they are suffering. This is a grave mistake. In actuality, the opposite is true.
To be truly helpful to someone means that you put your energy at the service of the solution of the problem, not of the problem itself. To do so you need to make yourself bigger rather than smaller. The more self-consciousness and independence you radiate, the more you represent the “energy of the solution” and the more you can mean for someone else without exhausting yourself. If you are going to suffer with them, you are really only affirming the problem. If you stay centered and calm, not resonating with the heavy emotions of the other, you open up another angle, another way of looking at the problem. Precisely by not resonating with the energy of the problem, you shed new light on it.
True spiritual guidance never involves solving someone else’s problem. Rather, it means to be a beacon of light and awareness to them, which mirrors their problems back to them in a way that enables them to take another look at it. It enables them to see meaning and value in the problem; it returns to them a sense of free will and responsibility. Something inside of you touches their heart and inspires them: it is the energy of love. It is the energy of acceptance. In this way, you offer the “energy of the solution” to them, not by doing anything for them, but by being it. That is lightwork: being your natural self, having peace with yourself and radiating that peace to others. It is not about carrying other people’s burdens or finding solutions to their problems. It is about carrying the energy of the solution in your own being and openly sharing it with others. That is the core of your mission on earth, the core of what it means to bring light.
Being true to yourself, taking good care of yourself and listening to what your intuition tells you is a prerequisite to anchor the frequency of love to earth. This is what your soul wants for you. Anytime you let others run away with your energy, or give too much of yourself out of fear or a need to control, a part of your light gets shattered and you will need to recuperate and emotionally heal yourself to regain your natural balance and vitality. Notice how this happens in your everyday life. If you are worrying about other people, about how they perceive you or how you should help them, and your thoughts are going in circles, and the same emotions repeat themselves, you are stuck in the rut of fear and control. Often, you tend to give away your energy because you think you are making things better, helping people out or solving a problem. But pay attention: does your contribution really serve the solution of the problem or does it affirm and thereby perpetuate the problem. Ask yourself whether you aren’t really serving an idol, instead of your own inner light.
Trying to control things often seems right and sensible, but often it is just fear that forces you to. You frequently feel tired and exhausted from all your exertions in different areas of your life, but often you stick to it and feel that you are obliged to put even more energy into it. You think you owe it to someone, to some organisation, to society or even to God. But anytime you feel emotionally exhausted, pushing it too far, it is really time to let go and find some quiet space for yourself. It is time to let go of the world and turn within. Cutting the cords for a while and reconnecting to your inner child is of great importance to remain centered and balanced. By connecting to the child, you also awaken the angelic you, the keeper of the child. You connect to your “lower self” and “higher self” and by feeling them inside, and listening to them carefully, you start to sense how they can play together joyfully in your present. It becomes clear what things you need to do or pursue to become centered and peaceful again.
Finding and following your passion
Everyone is born with a passion. Imagine that passion to be a beautiful red rose. Imagine that, just before you are born, you are standing at the edge of heaven, holding this exquisite red rose in your hand. Though you may hesitate to take the leap into the earth realm, even wondering gloomily whether you are really up to it, you sense a fire deep within, a passion, which presents itself to you as the red rose. Now imagine that you take the leap, you incarnate, and now you carry the rose within, in your belly and heart. Let the energy of the rose come to you now. Allow your original passion, your inspiration to present itself to you in this moment. Take a look at the rose, what does it look like now? Take the first image that springs to your mind. Does the rose look a bit sad and worn out, or does it radiate vibrantly? Do you see a rose bud or a blooming flower? Does it need anything from you in this moment? Perhaps more water or sunlight, or some more love and attention, or does it want to be removed to another spot, to more nurturing surroundings? Imagine that you give it exactly what it needs, and feel how this affects you on the inner level.
Red is the color of the earth and of the base or root chakra. Red is the color of passion. You are often afraid of your own passion. You are afraid to let this original flow express itself openly in your lives, because it goes against what society or tradition considers proper, right and sane. However, in each one of you there is an original passion and inspiration that is the very source of your existence here and now. You cannot really be fulfilled and inspired, until you allow that energy to run through your life and guide it. The essence of surrender as a lifestyle is that you surrender to yourself, to your soul’s passion, the inspiration that cradled your current lifetime.
There are a few ways in which you can recognize whether you are connected to your soul’s passion.
1. Feeling inspiration – wherever it flows, that’s where you need to be
Surrender as a lifestyle means that you let yourself be guided by what truly inspires you. Surrender is not a passive energy. By surrendering to what really motivates and inspires you, you open the gate to a lively and active flow of energy within. To discover that flow for yourself, you need to find out with what kind of activities your energy naturally flows. What things make you feel happy and peaceful? In what kind of occupation or pursuit do you feel that things move effortlessly and gracefully? What is the essence of these things or activities? Feel the essence of it – and know that there may be a variety of ways for this essence to take shape and form.
2. Being true to your own nature - what you do naturally, is what you are good at
To recognize your passion you need to realize that it is always something that is very natural to you. It is something, an activity or occupation or expression form, that you are drawn to, feel interested in and enjoy pursuing. It is something close and natural to you, almost self evident from your perspective. To bring your natural gift to fruition, you may have to learn some skills or pursue some formal education, but it will be relatively easy and joyful for you to do so. Your passion is something that your abilities and talents are attuned to; it involves activities that you are good at from the start.
3. Maintaining clear boundaries and daring to say “no” – take yourself seriously
You are in the flow of surrender to yourself if you take yourself seriously enough to say no to things or people that inhibit or cut off that flow. You can only follow your passion if you dare to say no to what does not fit or feel right to you. Surrendering to yourself, your unique inspiration, entails being precocious and stubborn sometimes, standing apart and trusting the messages of your heart even if people say you are silly and foolish. It is about loyalty to yourself. Dare to be grand, dare to make a difference! There is really no alternative, you know. The alternative is that your natural flow of inspiration gets stuck and dries up and you start to feel frustrated, empty, angry and unfulfilled. If you do not choose for yourself, you choose against yourself. The energy of the rose, your passion, withdraws and this creates psychological problems such as loneliness, estrangement and eventually depression. Therefore, dare to say no, dare to take up space with clear boundaries. Do not fear to be “egotistical” according to the standards of false gods.
4. Patience and rhythm – do it step by step
If you are connected to the energy of your soul, your inspiration, it will clear a path for you in your everyday life. Opportunities (in the form or people or situations you encounter) will come to you in a pace and rhythm that suits you. If you want to be attuned to that flow of manifestation, stay in the present and take it step by step. Try to not run ahead of all the things that need to happen to realise your dreams and passion. Life takes care of you, you need not take care of life. Simply feel your passion and entrust it to the hands of the God within you. Let the angel inside keep and watch over the dreams and longings of your inner child. Surrender and trust!
Thank you so much for being here today. It is a great pleasure to be with you and remember that the I who is saying this also very much represents your own energy. It is your own energy that beckons and invites you: dare to live, dare to be who you are!