Sunday, April 27, 2014

Want to win? Meditation for 4/28/14

Houlihan Bridge; Savannah GA

(To view today's photo journal entry, click here.)

“Surrender to win.”  -  Anon

“You cannot fulfill your purpose when you are focused on your own plans.”  -  Rick Warren

     When life brings us circumstances that vex us to the point that we are giving up rent-free space in our head, we need a solution.  All manner of things get us worked up – expectations we have that life is going to cooperate with our will, desires that plague us to the point we become irrational, realities that conflict with fixed notions we have formulated in our head.  Often it is other people or institutions that are acting in a manner that will interfere with the vision we have for our life.  But whatever it is, we must realize that what we resist persists.  Ever notice that it is when we “reach wits end” and give up on something that things start to change?  The reality of this life is that we just invigorate the very things that we want to change by resisting them.
 
     But this is where semantics plague us.  We think that surrendering to the reality of a situation is to give up on it entirely.  This is not the case at all.  For instance, say I have driven my car in the ditch.  I can stand there and complain to the passengers that they were distracting me.  I can cuss the road builders for having built an unsafe road.  I can whine how the suspension and tires on the car are not adequate.  But nothing is going to get better until I quit trying to assign blame or make excuses and surrender to the fact that my car is now in the ditch.  Only then can I start looking at alternatives or solutions to the circumstance I am facing.  Think this is trite?  Well, think about your last feud with someone that ended up resolving itself into a friendship.  At what point did the feud end and the friendship begin?  It happened at precisely the moment you surrendered to the reality that the other person is who they are, has done whatever it is they have done, realized that we are powerless over their behaviors and decided to accept them just as they are.   As long as we continue to bicker, plot, scheme, whine or engage in any other negative we are going to stay stuck right where we are.

     Just as surrender does not equal quitting, powerlessness does not equate to helplessness.  We need to find the internal calm and quiet to create the space for intuition to ease in, for new attitudes to take root and new actions to become possible.  And remember, this intuition does not tell us why we are to take a new course of action, it simply prescribes the actions that will achieve the best outcome for all involved.   It is just another of the paradoxes of the spiritual path – power comes from surrender, and surrender comes from the realization of powerlessness.  It will save us much aggravation if we can keep this fresh in our mind so that we can utilize it the moment we become disturbed.

Today, may I stay centered.

Happy Monday !!
David

  If you would like to contribute to this journey or to the foundation, just click Here.  If you have no idea what this is about, Click Here and Here, and click Here to email me.  Thanks for your interest and support !!



No comments:

Post a Comment

Feedback