“Soul Surrender”, collage, copyright Licia Berry 2006
“Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual”. – Octavio Paz
I’ve been known as an independent and willful person since I was very young; one of the most pervasive images I have been given of my own toddlerhood is of me sticking my chin out and saying “I want to do it myself”. These days we call that a “spirited child”, and know better than to think of these qualities as “bad”, or that the child is trying to be a trouble maker.
That stick-to-it-iveness has gotten me through some tough times, and so I am thankful that it has been a part of my being. It was a way to prop myself up when there wasn’t anyone on the outside holding me up.
Over the years, though, I noticed that there were times that called for a softer touch, a more melting center. When I began to consciously look at my own spirit nature, it seemed that there was something larger within that was asking me to surrender.
Surrender? Not me.
When I heard the word surrender, I thought of waving the white flag. I thought of giving up. I thought of being wrong and “I have failed in my efforts”. But this is not what my Spirit thinks.
Surrender, according to my conversations with my wise inner voice, is the act of allowing myself to become one with the greater Whole, or Love. It is laying down arms, letting go my need to be separate, merging once again with the larger flow of life.
This has felt like a safe way to conceptualize surrender to me. I don’t trust others enough (most of the time) to surrender myself to them or their agenda, but I DO trust Spirit enough to surrender IN it. Sometimes Spirit will ask me to surrender, and I will go kicking and screaming down the lane, but when I stop and realize it is only Love that wants to claim me, I stop fighting and it is such a relief.
But it is a choice! I know from hard won experience that I can choose to stay closed off in my little box because it feels safer to me. Sometimes I have been right to do that because conditions outside my little environment were NOT safe. But other times, I have missed out on some good stuff because I was so busy defending myself or hanging on to an old way of being that no longer served me.
So the Octavio Paz quote above has special meaning to me. Love cannot penetrate me, nor can I wake up to the fact that Love is actually the core of what I am, unless I am willing to open and soften and let it be.
xo, Licia
