SURRENDERING TO OUR HEALING

enlarges the boundaries of our hearts

Painting by Emma Burleigh

Hi, Friends:

If you’re here and hanging out with me, you likely consider yourself to be on a spiritual path. It’s also possible that you feel some hesitancy about the concept of “surrender.” It’s a loaded word for many. An overused word for others.

While there are hundreds of books written on this topic, from every faith tradition and perspective, I decided to share a few insights from trusted teachers as well as the from the 12-step Recovery Community.

Let’s start with the Recovery movement.

Most people are now familiar with 12-Step Recovery Groups. One of the beautiful tenets of the 12-Step Program is the concept of a Higher Power. It is a starting point for many who have been wounded by traditional faith systems or never introduced to the concept of a Higher Power. 12- Steps work relies upon a recognition that “there is something greater than me.” You won’t be told what to believe about a higher power, it is more a process of exploring what it means to you.

All branches of the the12-step program include a version of the Third Step:

“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.”

1) Decision 2) surrender it all 3) to the God of our understanding.

There’s a common recognition in recovery communities that while we may surrender, we tend to “snatch it back” and have to surrender over and over again. This is not a one-time activity and that’s ok. We live one day at a time. One moment at a time. We surrender over and over. It’s a practice.

Maybe you’ve felt like theologian Howard Thurman and you just want to be let alone:

“I struggle against the work of God in my heart; I want to be let alone. I want my boundaries to remain fixed, that I may be at rest. But even now, as I turn to God, in the quietness, God’s work in me is ever the same. God is at work enlarging the boundaries of my heart. “

God is at work enlarging the boundaries of my heart.

I first read that sentence about a year ago when I was slowly reading through Howard Thurman’s Meditations of the Heart each morning, I remember thinking, OH MY YES. That is what I desire, to have the boundaries of my heart enlarged! But it also comes with a price. The price is surrender. Surrendering can be scary, even if we’ve done it before.

In another section of the book he writes this:

“If I make of my life an offering and a dedication to God, then this dedication will include all of my entanglements and involvements. There follows then a radical change over my entire landscape and miraculously I am free at my center.”

So there’s an interesting promise of profound freedom and integration that comes through surrender that doesn’t initially feel obvious. Surrender can lead to freedom. It can lead to healing. It can lead to the “sewing up of old hurts” and the liberation of the heart. It impacts every area of our life. The boundaries of our hearts can be expanded.

My teacher, Richard Rohr, offers this insight into the connection between surrender and healing:

“To finally surrender ourselves to healing, we have to have three spaces opened up within us - and all at the same time: our opinionated head, our closed-down heart, and our defensive and defended body. That is the summary work of spirituality - and it is indeed work. Yes, it is also the work of “a Power greater than ourselves,” and it will lead to a great luminosity and depth of seeing. That is why true faith is one of the most holistic and free actions a human can perform. It leads to such broad and deep perception that most traditions would just call it ‘light’… Such luminous seeing is quite the opposite of the closed-minded, dead-hearted, body-denying thing that much religion has been allowed to become.”

Another beautiful teacher of mine, Mirabai Starr, when speaking of John of the Cross, says this:

"John wrote that surrendering to God is like letting ourselves come down into the arms of an unconditionally loving mother. God the Mother holds the baby soul close, warming it with the heat of her breasts, and strokes its tender face. She nourishes the soul with sweet milk and softened food.” - Mirabai Starr - Luminous Darkness

I don’t know about you but that brings me comfort. I wonder if you knew that God wasn’t always viewed as a punitive masculine presence, even by mystics of the Christian path? How does it shift things within you to consider God as maternal? As the Great Mother? Does this help you feel less apprehensive about surrender knowing we can “ let ourselves come down into the arms of a loving mother?”

Maybe another thought concerns you. What about surrender versus passivity? Some people use the concept of surrender to relinquish responsibility. As in, “I just surrender it all to God” and now I am freed from any personal responsibility. This is the “thoughts and prayers” category without any action.

Jim Finley ( my teacher, and one of my favorite humans currently on the planet) said this recently:

“People hear this surrender language and surrender over their personal agency and responsibility. So for me, a healthy way of looking at it is to surrender over to our Higher Power ( to God, The Divine…) what we are incapable of achieving without the Divine. Which is actually life itself. You know, we can’t keep our own heart beating…

Also, in working through character defects or problems, we hand over to the Higher Power what we can’t achieve ourselves in getting past the hurtful habit. But we don’t hand over our self-efficacy. On the contrary, we turn to the Higher Power to help our self-efficacy be more efficacious and to empower us to act and to be responsible for our actions. This responsibility flows directly from the grace of the Higher Power to give us the grace to do what we need to do.”

Surrender, seen in this way, is a call to be more responsible, not less, and helps us gauge what is ours to do and what is not.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - The Serenity Prayer

It’s a dance. So there’s always a balance. Because at other times, our separate ego will kind of put its hand up to shush our Higher Power saying, “ You know what, I got this. I can handle this without you.

So we are always looking for that healthy surrendering to our Higher Power to enhance our responsibility for our own behavior and our own choices.

“Psychological and spiritual maturity is learning to have a familiarity with that dance and to keep the balance there.” - Jim Finley

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Painting by Karen Griswold

When we view surrender in these ways it just might change our reluctance to restoration.

• When we see surrender as enlarging the boundaries of our hearts and being free at our center

• When we surrender to our own healing it can bring luminosity and depth of seeing

• When we surrender and trust that we can fall into the arms of Mother God ( Or any concept of God/HP that allows you to experience God’s true essence)

• When we surrender we learn to trust in a Higher Power and through grace become more responsible for our lives, not less

• When we surrender in these and other ways, we move toward psychological and spiritual maturity.

EmmaBurleigh.com

As we practice surrender, we are held by that which is greater than ourselves. We find that what we feared was untrustworthy turns out to be the most trustworthy source.

What does it mean to surrender? Did any of these concepts resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

xo Mary

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A POEM WORTH SHARING:

This poem completely undid me, broke me open, and left me tearful in recognition.

SANTIAGO by David Whyte

The road seen, then not seen, the hillside hiding
then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you
as if leaving you to walk
on thin air, then catching you,
holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,

And the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed,
the way that you came, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,

no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it always had to break
your heart along the way: the sense of having walked
from far inside yourself, out into the revelation,

to have risked yourself for something that seemed
to stand both inside you and far beyond you,
and that called you back in the end to the only road
you could follow, walking as you did, in your rags
of love and speaking in the voice that by night
became a prayer for safe arrival.

So that one day you realized
that what you wanted had already happened,
and long ago and in the dwelling place
in which you lived in before you began,

and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and then drew you on

and that, you were more marvelous in your
simple wish to find a way than the gilded roofs
of any destination you could reach:

as if, all along, you had thought the end point
might be a city with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought
was the end of the road, you found just
a simple reflection, and a clear revelation
beneath the face looking back and beneath it
another invitation, all in one glimpse:

like a person or a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.

—From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte

If you want a special treat, watch David Whyte’s TED TALK from 2017 where he shares this poem and so much more.

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This month I will be donating a portion of my paid subscriptions to :

ATV /Alternative To Violence, Loveland. Alternatives to Violence provides shelter, advocacy, education and resources for people impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking

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