Sunday Sermon [Surrender and Devotion]

Hola mi gente…
I’ll be at the Loisaida Festival today. Come join us!

Surrender & Devotion

You all are probably sick and tired of my constant references to surrender. But you see: there’s no way around it: if you want to be happy for once in your fuckin’ life you first have to surrender and surrender completely. This is no, “Well, I’ll surrender a little bit, then later I’ll surrender sum more” surrender. No, that shit doesn’t get it. You’ve been doing that long enough and half-assed surrendering got you half-assed results.

No, I want nothing more than your total, unconditional, utter surrender. And I don’t want it for myself (though my world would be made better by it), nor do I want you to surrender to me (though that would be nice).

I guess I should start at what I mean by surrender. The word “surrender” gets a bad rap in our culture, with its almost obsessive and exclusive focus on the individual. Surrender is often interpreted as giving up, weakness, ceding, as in defeat. While I am referring somewhat to giving up, I use it in a different way. Surrendering to me means letting go of our resistance to and fear of the total openness of who we really are. Allow me to reiterate:

Surrender means opening up to the fact of the total openness of who you really are.

Yup. You are total open consciousness. You may not know it, but everything you need for your freedom exists within you right now, in this very life, this very moment. You just need to stop resisting this very important truth.

Surrendering to me means giving up that little mass of tensions you call your “self” -- the story you created as a response for the need to feel real. All that bullshit: your horoscope, your Myers/ Briggs categorization, your social security number, your ID card -- all that shit is bullshit. It’s your little telenovela, your personal soap opera. That is not who you are. That whole thing -- that “personality” -- is a bundle of tension you chose to take on in order to separate yourself from everyone else’s telenovelas. You can actually feel it: it manifests itself as a contraction in your body.

You cannot be vulnerable nor can you surrender while immersed in your personal soap opera. You cannot love, nor know love, nor be loved while you’re all twisted like that.

Soften yourself, breathe -- luxuriate in your free space… 

Surrendering to me means to open with no boundaries. Shit, you cannot say, “I love you,” when in a state of surrender. There is no “I” -- no “you” -- that loves. There is only love. Quick! Think of someone you love totally without condition -- a son or daughter, or a lover… 

Feel that?

That is what you are. It’s palpable -- you can feel this thing that you are -- it’s always there even when you lose sight of it. That’s who and what you are.

Surrender to me means loving without limits. It means to break down your walls and to let down your guard so that your lover can feel your genuine, naked, and unhidden core without defenses. Your belly becomes soft and your breath becomes full. You willingly open your body and heart to your lover. When you reach this level of awareness, life unfolds differently. If you are hurt, you experience the hurt, but you remain open and full. You live your life as open like the sky, the ocean, the trees. Surrender to me is the gateway to the deepest possible way of knowing.

You might say you have opened like this and I will challenge you. You may have surrendered to someone or something but I have met very few people who have surrendered to the notion they are love. What I mean by surrendering is the practice (not the thought, or analysis) of surrendering. In this context it is not surrendering to your fears, nor the demands of another, but directly to love. If you tell me you have no resistance to any of this, then I’m going to call you on your bullshit because if you have ever tried surrendering in this way the first realization is that there is a huge resistance to it.

True surrender, in the manner in which I use the word, is not adapting in order to please people. Nor is it even momentarily sacrificing your emotional needs. These are all secondary needs and true surrender is about breaking through veil of these secondary needs and amplifying the primal and very human yearning to give and receive unlimited and unbound love.

And that my friends is devotion.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…