Situations that Defy Surrender or Consecration

June 6, 2002

 

  • Surrender is of the being, consciousness, power and delight.
  • Our prayer for a particular result is NOT surrender that gives, but a desire that asks for something. When it is granted, we falsely flatter ourselves that it is because of our surrender. It is not true.
  • A time comes when the issues grow in size or weight and, the prayed for result does not issue. Then we think of surrender and find it is not there. In truth, surrender has never been there. Now that our usual prayer does not have its usual positive result, and resort to surrender is ineffective, we understand it is a situation that defies surrender.
  • In such situations, we find our mind insisting on its own ideas instead of endorsing the effect of surrender.
  • There is a promotion due. We see intrigues in the office to award it to a junior. Our prayer is ineffective. Insistent thoughts defy attempts at surrender is a typical situation. One is helpless against ideas that insist on outer initiative – to aggressively claim one’s due.
  • To assert one’s claim is an initiate, an outer method of the mind.
  • It happens when our own personality, the person we are, our mentality – WE – have no faith or no sufficient faith in surrender.
  • The question is how to surrender overcoming the initiative of mind.
  • Any method of mind, we know, has two sides of success or failure, however righteous or strong our cause is, as there are a hundred other forces at work, while an act once surrendered has only one outcome, success for The Mother. This is a knowledge of the soul.
  • One may forget to surrender which is unconsciousness.
  • Another may act according to his initiative and after fully expressing the initiative may think of surrender feebly, which is weak consciousness against strong ego. Another may think of surrender only when the work fails.
  • The point at which surrender comes to the mind shows the measure of his consciousness. Any beginning can be made only there.
  • It starts as a remembrance, an opinion, a belief, a conviction, a mental faith and grows in strength in the measure one shifts to surrender.
  • Such a shift announces itself as a growing calm that is ineffective to solve the problem but effective to banish tension.
  • How quickly one can move from an initial calm to final solution is determined by the human choice one exercises along the way.
  • It is a well known phenomenon that each little gain of CALM or STRENGTH is fully used by the ego to push ahead the initiative of mind.
  • It is equally a well observed phenomenon that while the ego is active, an indifference or forgetfulness overtakes one, both of which are expressions of unconsciousness.
  • Mechanical repetition of “I surrender myself” works at the physical level for those who are centred there.
  • Calling Mother into oneself works for vital personalities.
  • A clearer understanding or a change of mind with respect to surrender works for mental people.
  • Methods depend upon the type of personality.
  • A spiritual person IS silent in the face of odds.
  • One can be aware, at this stage, of one’s eagerness to use the calm that develops to assert. To see that move and withdraw one’s energy from there is a help. Energy thus saved goes to strengthen the faith.
  • Mental ideas arise as alternatives of success or failure, the measure of each varying.
  • Faith in surrender is always success to Mother. That knowledge is reassuring and with reassurance grows faith.
  • With growing faith, calm establishes itself and enables faith to produce results.
  • What matters is awareness, consciousness, remembrance of Mother, and surrender.
  • When it is not there, create it. When it is there, concentrate on it.
  • Conscious awareness excludes problems.
  • Surrender defied is ego asserted.
  • When such calm develops for a while, the feeling that the thought may at last be surrendered rises a little.
  • When the most important work relents a little, it is the best time to attempt surrendering work of NO significance, such as turning a page or sitting down in a chair. It is an occasion for one to experience that for surrender no work is great or small.
  • Turning a page admits of the movement of surrender only as much as the thought of promotion.
  • As a corollary, we now see the complete surrender can be attempted at any point of life, regardless of its depth, intensity or significance.
  • Each man enjoys a certain degree of social respectability at all points of his social intercourse. Points of contact may vary, but the treatment he receives is unvarying. So too is the success of consecration.
  • It is not as if he meets from outside the SAME treatment. It is his own swabhava, nature that evokes the response at each point of social contact.
  • The root of ego is in the thinking mind and its knot in the subtle heart.
  • People given to thinking will find the resistance greatest in the head which those who feel see in the heart, but everyone has to meet the ego at both centres.
  • There are moments when the head gives way and the heart is there prominently and at those moments one feels he is meeting his entire being at the heart.
  • When the idea that surrender is unfailing grows on one, it is better he makes his effort at surrender more and more precisely.
    • by withdrawing his reliance on his claim,
    • on the method of claiming,
    • on the method as such,
    • on the externalities as a whole,
    • on the emotion of relying on the claim,
    • on the very habit of it,
    • on the physical sensation of the claim.