Thursday, October 20, 2005

SURRENDER
“All surrender to beauty willingly and to power unwillingly.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan
“If thou desire the presence, union with God Most High, from him be not absent;
When thou visitest thy Beloved, abandon the world and let it go.”
Hafiz
The word surrender, in English, has some very definite connotations, none of which are warm and cuddly. Surrender brings up images of domination by a superior force and of being compelled into an action one would rather not take. That is in English. I understand that other languages do not necessarily have this problem. A friend of mine, who is Japanese, tells me that her language has two words for surrender that are not interchangeable in usage, one being much as I have described and the other acceptance of love’s enfoldment. It would not surprise me to find that other Eastern languages make some distinction like this. We must, however, deal with what we have and what we know and I only know English, which is why the use of the word has always sent a slight shiver up my spine.
Maybe this whole concept of surrender is easy for you, if so I applaud your understanding, me, I never liked the idea. Whenever I would hear someone speak of surrender, surrender to the Beloved for example, my immediate reaction always seemed to be, “There’s no way I’m doing something I don’t understand.” The words, surrender to the Beloved, do have a certain poetic appeal I suppose but to me it sounded like conceding power to whoever this Beloved character turns out to be. Which is exactly correct as it turns out but I had the connotation wrong. It is the problem of language that causes these little logjams in our thinking. To the mystic words always have at least two levels of meaning. The first is the use the word has in the empirical world wherein it is used as description, identification, etc. and the second is the use it is put to in attempting to describe the indescribable world beyond reason. Within this latter world or state, surrender takes on a whole new dimension.
The two paragraphs above are excerpts from another chapter of The Sovereign Soul. I have been giving a lot of thought to surrender of late, still trying to puzzle out just what it is. There is a definite physical sensation that one can have when one surrender’s to Love’s embrace. I do not mean “hot and bothered” either. I am talking about something quite different. Surrendering to our physical instincts has a certain charm I suppose and certainly a definite purpose but surrendering to our higher states of being is what is in question in this instance. The former is well known, the later not so much. Surrendering to the Beloved in Sufism has some very definite meanings.
I am going to make a kind of thumbnail sketch here and then leave it to you to fill it out. Love is the outcome of the Divine Intent to know itself. Love causes creation but then, in order to recognize itself requires a Lover, that’s us. The Lover then needs an object of
adoration to focus his attention upon, that would be what we call the Beloved. Therefore Love creates the Lover out of need for recognition and the Lover creates the Beloved out of devotion and the need to love something, to express the Divine Intent. A kind of Celestial cause and effect.
So perhaps you can see how surrender fits in here. Let’s see what people come up with.
Love & Blessings, Musawwir

5 comments:

Julia said...

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Julia said...

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Suriya said...

Surrendering is about aligning one self to God's will. The trick is in understanding what that is, listening to the still voices that sometimes speak so quietly that our thoughts drown them out.
I like the analogy of surrendering to the Beloved . I am listening to Pir Zia's old tape about Laila and Majnoon and how Majnoon in his love finally identified himself completely as Laila.

Anonymous said...

Dear Phillip,
Lately I am so tired, I am sleeping alot. I apoligize for not writting here but promise to soon. Its my month october, maybe this is why I am tired. I wonder if any other libra's are tired too like me. Hope all is well with all.

Go In Love~ Shakti

Anonymous said...

Greetings
In all of life the one thing that i do now value and treasure is surrender. This i know sounds a little odd, but to me surrender is the letting go of/or release of something. Relinquishing of fears, and so allowing a mind that is open to new ideas and experiences.
Many years ago i read a book "Illusions the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", by Richard Bach. There is a small creature in a river hanging onto a rock, against the advice of the other small creatures he lets go of his rock. All tell him he will die! Moving out of his comfort zone he lets go of his rock, and trusts the current of the river to take him where it will. Downstream all are amazed, he has survived and he has learned new things.
Sometimes to learn new things we must surrender some old ones.
I find it a very cleansing process!
Blessings