This concludes my book study of The Power of Now.
It’s been interesting these last few weeks.
My eldest child got COVID, but they harassed her to return to work too early and she is not healing. I am upset about a situation that I can’t help.
My middle daughter got her wisdom teeth out.
My third child got their cast off their leg and is starting physical therapy.
I have lots of responsibilities and my schedule is full.
I love how this chapter reflects on illness and injury and how being present, conscious, in The Now gives enlightenment to tragic circumstances in our lives. I have longed to express that inner knowledge that I knew in my soul for decades.
I have felt saddened by so many who wear an illness on their sleeves like a badge of honor. Many American Christians attest to suffering as following Jesus and I am always bothered by that sentiment.
Chapter Ten: The Power of Surrender
Favorite quotes:
To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.
Let me give you a visual analogy to illustrate the point I am making. You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.
It is true that only an unconscious person will try to use or manipulate others, but it is equally true that only an unconscious person can be used and manipulated.
Then one day, in the middle of an argument, you will suddenly realize that you have a choice, and you may decide to drop your own reaction — .just to see what happens. You surrender.
Nonresistance doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. All it means is that any “doing” becomes nonreactive.
Remember the deep wisdom underlying the practice of Eastern martial arts: Don’t resist the opponent’s force. Yield to overcome.
In Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as “actionless activity” or “sitting quietly doing nothing.”
Until there is surrender, unconscious role-playing constitutes a large part of human interaction. In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real.
What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming “vulnerable,” can you discover you discover your true and essential invulnerability.
Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection.
When you are ill or disabled, do not feel that you have failed in some way, do not feel guilty. Do not blame life for treating you unfairly, but do not blame yourself either. All that is resistance. If you have a major illness, use it for enlightenment. Anything “bad” that happens in your life – use it for enlightenment.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what I have just said? Then that is a clear sign that the illness has become part of your sense of self and that you are now protecting your identity — as well as protecting the illness. The condition that is labeled “illness” has nothing to do with who you truly are.
As far as the still unconscious majority of the population is concerned, only a critical limit-situation has the potential to crack the hard shell of the ego and force them into surrender and so into the awakened state. A limit-situation arises when through some disaster, drastic upheaval, deep loss, or suffering your whole world is shattered and doesn’t make sense anymore. It is an encounter with death, be it physical or psychological. The egoic mind, the creator of this world, collapses. Out of the ashes of the old world, a new world can then come into being.
Full attention is full acceptance, is surrender. By giving full attention, you use the power of the Now, which is the power of your presence. No hidden pocket of resistance can survive in it. Presence removes time. Without time, no suffering, no negativity, can survive.
God is Being itself, not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God but that you are not conscious of God.
Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness.
Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.
It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion.
You cannot truly forgive yourself or others as long as you derive your sense of self from the past. Only through accessing the power of the Now, which is your own power, can there be true forgiveness. This renders the past powerless, and you realize deeply that nothing you ever did or that was ever done to you could touch even in the slightest the radiant essence of who you are. The whole concept of forgiveness then becomes unnecessary.
When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. The Now is the key.
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