True Surrender

There is a universe of difference between a surrendered Being and a human being who 'believes' they are surrendered. A sharp, visceral difference, and the nervous system of a surrendered Being recognises it before the mind can name it.

To be truly surrendered in God/ life is to give everything — every hope, every identity, even the spiritual one, every craving, every comfort, every perspective, EVERY harsh inner truth — to the current of life. It is to stand in the flow and let it move through you, EXACTLY as it arises, in complete vulnerability, the ability to hide from Truth anywhere has dissolved, not for reward, not for recognition, not for image. It is choiceless.

To be surrendered is to be dismantled without choice again and again and again, mercilessly. There's no 'choosing' to be surrendered, surrender chooses you, there is no volition in this. To have your heart broken repeatedly, your mind undone repeatedly, to the point of insanity, your sense of self dissolved, until nothing recognisable remains.

There is zero control in this, like being thrown into a washing machine, and at God's will each cycle relentlessly shaking the system to the point of collapse....there's reprieve for a while...while integration occurs...then another cycle begins. It's relentless until the stripping of ego is complete.

Until there's nothing left to spin....

No ground left to stand on....

or rather nobody left that requires ground....

And if you haven't taken your life yourself by this point...Well done! This is the true path of awakening that nice, cosy spiritual poetry doesn't talk about.

There are many ways to awaken. Insight can come in glimpses, in soft realisations, in practices, in devotion, in love. Each is valid, each has its beauty, each transforms in its own measure. But the path of full embodiment—the total surrender into Life—is reserved for the warrior of the heart. It is gruelling, relentless. It is crucifying. It dismantles the self repeatedly, stripping every identity, every comfort, every hope, every spiritual mask, until nothing recognisable remains. It is the only path that carries the body, mind, and soul fully into the current of Being, without reserve, without choice, without illusion. This path is crucifixion, and only those willing to be utterly undone can move through it into the fullness of presence, into the embodied infinity of Life.

To be truly surrendered into God is not a gentle, cozy, love and light path. It requires facing, acknowledging, accepting, and fully admitting every aspersion ever cast by the human mind since the beginning of time as though it were your own, because, in the depths of Being, it is. Every cruelty, every harm ever inflicted, every atrocity committed in thought, word, or deed — all of it must be owned, acknowledged, deeply felt and integrated, all of it must pass through the body and heart. Only after this total, unwavering acknowledgment — the shattering recognition that what was done to you and what was done by you are one in the crucible of existence — only then....does the loving arms of eternity fold you home into itself. And no one would EVER consciously choose this. It is not a path we elect; it is a path that chooses us, if the fire is real, if the heart is willing, if God wills, surrender flows through your body.

And when nothing of you, who you knew yourself to be, what you thought life was or meant, remains, there's a rebirth, for want of a better word. Reborn into a space that cannot be owned. The words, the feelings, the experiences, the memories, the love, the grief — it is deeply recognised that they are not 'yours'. They are Life moving through and as this body. The body is recognised or remembered to Be eternity. Everything that ever was, is or will be.

This path does not manufacture authority, a position of a someone 'in the knowing of God'. It does not create “spiritual identity.” It does not give you a voice that you can control and direct. The authentically surrendered life is simply porous Being, so exquisitely tender, endlessly vulnerable and open to every arising of God. The body remembers intricately every ache of Being dismantled; the nervous system carries the residue of grief, tenderness and openness for decades. The soul or spirit itself becomes a witness to the body’s painful undoing.

This is what awakening feels like: like the observing soul of the butterfly witnessing its caterpillar aspect painfully shed its skin of identity, dissolve into the chrysalis, and emerge as butterfly — its complete self — while the caterpillar aspect has no idea what is happening to it. The old self dies, the illusions/perspectives/beliefs of that limited aspect collapse, and the body, mind, and heart are utterly unmade, over and over, until nothing recognisably human remains. You move through grief, heartbreak, and dissolution so many times that the self you once knew can never be reconstructed. And yet, it is here — in this unmade, tender, scattered state — the unfiltered flow of God, the infinite current, moves through most fully.

Contrast that with the ego that believes it is surrendered. It can speak the language of God. It can write words that shimmer and dazzle the ego that doesn't yet sense the difference between authentic flow and curation. It can adopt titles, adopt humility, and wrap ambition in light. It can be admired, even adored, again by those innocents who cannot yet feel the difference. But its surrender is conceptual, not lived, not embodied. It has never been TRULY broken open, never been absorbed by a depth of grief into pieces that cannot be reassembled, never been utterly dismantled by the fire of life/ God. Its words float. Its surrender is a cloak, not a current. Its “love” is a projection, a self-enhancement, an imitation of Truth. An imitation of the true and deeply embodied integrity of Being....and it is recognised effortlessly by Truly surrendered Being.

There is a subtle heartbreak in seeing this. The heart aches, not from judgment, but from tenderness, from memory, from knowing the fire so intimately that burns unseen. To watch the spiritual egos lead innocent hearts astray towards a conceptual framework of manufactured 'love and light' — those who speak of God and love but in whom ego has not yet been unravelled by it — is to watch their firework display of grandeur over a cathedral you've walked through completely naked, freezing cold, open and vulnerable knowing every stone and every shadow. Their light maybe dazzles, for a while, but it cannot touch the depth that only Being completely dismantled grants. That only walking through that dark cathedral alone, facing that sense of being utterly and completely forsaken by God, grants.

This is why true surrender to God, to life, cannot be marketed, performed, or replicated in any way. It cannot be claimed by ambition. It absorbs the entire individual lifetime into itself — and it will break ego over and over and over until the “you” who thought it 'mattered' or was relevant in or to life in any individual way disappears completely. And in that disappearance, the river moves, undisturbed, quiet, infinite, just as it always was.

To witness the mimicry, the projection, the ambition cloaked in inflated words and self imposed pedestals — is heartbreaking. Not because they are wrong. How can any aspect of life be wrong. Not because they are lesser. But because the excruciating path has been so fully felt in the body in a way theirs maybe never will. And you recognise, with every fibre of your being, the difference between being moved by God and ego 'believing' you are moved by God.

True surrender leaves no self behind AT ALL. False surrender leaves only illusion. And the ache felt when the world celebrates illusion is the echo of a life lived naked to the current, tender, exposed, raw and real.