Passion Week - Good Friday
Jesus’ life provides many wonderful examples of how to be an everyday mystic. Jesus the Christ lived his earthly life in constant alignment with God’s spirit and will. The events of Passion Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter) provide some of the most wonderful, evocative examples of how to live in connection with Divine energy. I’d like to offer my thoughts on Jesus’ surrender to God’s will on Good Friday.
Among what is called the Seven Last Words of Christ (they are really phrases), there are three that speak to me this Easter season. In the first one that appeals to me, Jesus reveals the physical agony of his death ("I thirst"). The second reveals his questioning of God’s will ("My God, why have you forsaken me?"), and the third provides the example of his ultimate surrender to the Divine plan ("Into your hands, I commit my spirit"). I find comfort in these words because I have suffered with health issues, I have gone through long periods when I’ve felt abandoned by God, and I struggle with surrender to the Divine plan.
I don’t like the word surrender, perhaps because I resist it so well. I prefer to redefine surrender as the intention of putting Spirit first, then acting. I, to the contrary, have a tendency to act, to do, to wrestle with earthly projects/people/events and then try to find the Spirit in them. Hmmm, as Dr. Phil might ask, "Is that working for you?" The answer is, it has worked OK so far, but I find it a recipe for exhaustion and burnout. Not the way I want to live the rest of my life. My intention is to find an easier way.
I am just now learning to find my direction from the Divine realm through meditation, paying attention to my intuition and to the synchronicities that abound in my life, and prayer. Then and only then should I act. I am becoming more discerning about the messages I receive - whether they are from my ego (these are tinged with fear or anger) and those that come from my highest self or the Divine spark within me. Those messages are bathed in love and ease. That is my definition of surrender - seeking guidance from my deepest truth and love, committing my spirit into the hands of the Divine realm, and only then acting.
I know that the result will be greater ease, and the wonderment of what Spirit can do for me. After all, the Divine One can certainly do a better job with the details than I can.
I think Carolyn Myss tells the joke, "How do you make God laugh?" The answer : "Tell God your plans." I believe that the Divine plan is bigger, better and more amazing than anything I could dream up. I also recognize how difficult it is for me to accept that when I hit a rough patch in life’s road.
Prayer:
Thank you, Holy One, for the example of holy living that Jesus the Christ provides us. Help me to put your plan first in my life, to choose love over fear and surrender to the greater good that is your plan for me. Amen.
This is the Everyday Mystic’s second post of three on the Easter story. You can visit the first post about Palm Sunday at http://kristinrobertson.com/passion-week-thoughts-palm-sunday.htm
There are so many times I hear people talk about “surrendering to God’s will” or “putting a concern God’s hands. or that God “has a plan for us.” I have trouble with this on a conceptual level as it brings to mind images of being on a puppet string connected to a great puppet master in the sky, or being a pawn in a giant chess game. How could there actually be a plan for what I should do at any given time? How could the divine energy that connects us all have a concern for untangling the details of my individual human existence? It doesn’t seem to fit.
I wonder if the core of this concept is non-resistance, which opens one to the energy of love rather than fear. This may not change all the undesireable circumstances ones life, but I can see how it would change the perception of them. Still aren’t our actions and responses our own, regardless of how they are inspired?
I am interested to hear how others find this concept of surrender working in their life, as it seems to bring many a great deal of comfort and peace.
I suspect that the answer to this is as individual as each of us are and there are no “right” or “wrong” perspectives - just unique as we each are.
I rely on a personal Divine Beloved who is and has been important in my life. I don’t ask anyone else to experience life or faith in the same way, as I believe that each of us has a unique path. What I write is deeply personal, and not intended to be expected of or even desired for anyone else.
I can’t draw a line where my “highest” self (my Essence) and where Divine Love (God) start and stop. God is both within me but also much larger than me. Yet, the Divine Beloved is intensely personal and can reach me in ways that I do not experience otherwise. When I surrender, I am surrendering not only to God but also to my highest self who comes from, is part of, and returns to Love.
When I surrender to God, I am surrendering to this Divine Essence of which I am a part, and actively choosing to live life in harmony with it, in contrast to the fearful, petty, and negative individual which I am also capable of being, unfortunately. For me, surrendering is loving and feeling loved as I am. Surrendering to the Divine Essence opens me to love, but for me, more than human love as I have experienced it, and allows me to become more than I am capable of being otherwise. And, I believe that Divine Love/God has wisdom, energy, and force that can heal and change events if one opens one’s self to that potential.
It is very difficult to explain a concept of God/Divine Love that I experience. I love my son. Like God is for me, my love for him is invisible and almost limitless; it loves him as he is, even while hoping for who he may become. It is only through my actions and the energey of Love as he experiences them in his life that my love for him is evident; there is no visible evidence that Love exists other than through secondary indirect means. Similarly, I recognize the presence of a personal - but universal - Essence of Love in my life through the impact it has on who I am and who I become, and the events I experience each day. Amazing events occur to bring people or opportunities or messages into my life at times which are critical for me. Sometimes events mean that I may be the giver to someone else. Sometimes, Divine Love is simply being able to have faith in the future and knowing I am loved during those dark nights of the soul - the 3 a.m. awakenings when problems seem overwhelming and I search for peace.
Surrendering has meant understanding that there may be more important purposes or opportunities to love and make a difference than I may see or understand at any point in time. It is in looking at my life in hindsight that these tend to become more evident, and I have learned to trust in the future even when I cannot see it clearly. For me personally, the experience of Divine Love in my life allows me to become what I otherwise cannot seem to, and help others in ways I do not feel I would be capable of otherwise, and to experience peace. The best things in my life have come from surrendering to this Divine Essence and seeking harmony with Divine Love.
My words are far too inadequate to explain something that is so intangible - like Love itself. I only know that seeking the Divine in my life is as essential as eating and breathing, and without it, I lose myself.
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