Spiritual Surrender

This article shares a visitor's question about spiritual surrender and an answer from webmaster, Katherine T Owen.

Why would I want to experience spiritual surrender?

The validity of spiritual surrender

Dear David,

I really appreciate your heartfelt question.

Spiritual surrender is such a difficult concept for us. We associate surrender with losing. Indeed, there IS a sense of loss that comes with surrender to God. (See my spiritual poem on this page.)

If you don't “feel the love”, in your own words, it is completely understandable that you resist spiritual surrender.

Why would you surrender to someone you don't trust, unless you absolutely have to do so?

My spiritual beliefs are very much non-dual. That means I don't see God as the creator of those things that we see with our eyes and witness to with the very limited capacity of our senses.

The world IS cruel. It is a place of lack and suffering and illness and death.

Does this mean God cruel?
No.
God is the changeless Love behind the world.

Atheists are concerned for the naivety of religious people. But I believe that when we live only in the physical world we must be naive and  convince ourselves that the world is more beautiful than it is in order to keep ourselves comforted and emotionally stable.

Sadly, many people in the name of spirituality or religion also try to convince themselves the world is more beautiful than it is in order to believe that God is good.
There is no need to do so. God IS good. The world we see is not God’s world. It is a world in which our memory that we are spiritual beings has been hidden behind our belief in this world.

When we accept that God is the reality, and that what we experience is only a semblance of reality, it opens us to an experience that is beyond this world, to a Love that is beyond this world.

An increasing awareness of this love moves us towards the spiritual surrender of our identity as a small separate self. We are reborn in the knowledge that we are part of God.

In his book Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis speaks of his despair in the moment of surrender to God. For him surrender was motivated out of a process of reasoning which convinced him of the reality of God.

Spirituality and depression

David, you speak of your depression. I am sorry to hear that you are going through that.

Depression is a legitimate response to the realisation that the world can be horrible and also perhaps to the realisation that we ourselves are not the people we would like to be.

A worldly attempt to heal depression says that someone with depression needs to correct the way they see the world to see it more positively.

But the spiritual perspective offers an alternative for potential recovery from depression. Spiritual surrender comes not from blind faith but from x-ray vision.

See the world as it, but see also the Love that lies behind it.

See the crucifixion but do not dwell on it. Dwell on the resurrection.

Allow a breakdown to become a breakthrough.

David, keep asking the questions.

Keep sitting in silence and opening to the possibility of answers.

Our understanding is so limited. Spiritual surrender opens us to a Love beyond our understanding.

With love for your journey,

Katherine

Katherine T Owen, webmaster,
Author of Be Loved, Beloved (Kindle)

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Articles relevant to Spiritual Surrender

• Many people with addictions find 12 step spirituality helpful in recovery. The first three steps are an invitation to surrender to God.
• To read about natural healing for depression, visit my website on healing.
• Read powerful poems about surrender to God by visitor's to this website.

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