The Greatest Strength

April 17, 2014 Gulfport-Biloxi Airport and Easter Sunday in Elk Grove

The greatest strength is absolute surrender to this Life—this great mystery of universal evolution.  In the face of Great Mystery the fearful ego withdraws from identity with the powers of Life—shuns surrender and seeks control beyond its wisdom and ability. All human evil, all self-created suffering, stems from this fear-based hubris and ignorance of trying to control the Uncontrollable. When we realize that the universal currents we swim in are the essence of who we are, we can surrender to the Mysterious Power that births, sustains and receives us at death. Having relinquished the ego’s demands for godlike control through accepting life’s daily losses and ultimate physical death we gain the absolute freedom of mystic participation in this Divine Play. Through surrender to the Powers of Life we put ourselves in alignment with Life and become the agents of Creation. The Courage of Life replaces the fear of death. The question is, do we die a thousand small selfish deaths or take on the single big death of surrender of the self-centered ego to God-Great Mystery?

But how does one come to the point of absolute surrender? How does the human ego transcend its existential impulse to fear the other, to constrict and control in order to survive? The models for us to follow are the great mystics whose exemplary lives have birthed the great world religions. On this Easter Sunday our thoughts and lives turn to the image of Jesus dying on the cross and resurrecting three days later. Of all the great teachers, Jesus’ sacrifice is the clearest demonstration of surrendering in mystic participation into the suffering of life. Though Jesus’ suffering was great and his death horrific, millions of humans have had or are now experiencing equal or greater physical suffering. What is exemplary in Jesus’ passion play was his choosing a humiliating and painful death in order to demonstrate how the Courage of Love defeats the fear of death. Broken-bodied Jesus looks down upon us from the cross with eyes of compassion realizing that in our ego ignorance and fear “we know not what we do”. The teaching of Jesus’ death on the cross is that Great Love can be awakened in our own lives through our own willing acceptance of our own necessary suffering. We are all crucified on the crossbeams of Time and Space, change and loss. Like Jesus, we too can see in each moment with eyes of compassion and love born of our own willingly borne suffering. We can witness in full participation the pain of our own lives reflected in the lives of those around us—whether they be human, animal, or plant. All beings and all things are joined together in this mysterious round of Joyful-Sorrow we call life. The key decision is whether we embrace the inseparability of Life-Death or whether we choose to reject life on its own terms.

Resisting that which we cannot change is simply the little ego believing it could design the Universe better than God-Great Mystery. This is the hubris of Icarus, the Greek whose father devised a way for him to fly but who flew too near the sun melting the wax that held his man-made wings together. Ego-hubris goes before a great fall. Surrender to that which we cannot control is identical with faith in Life and the understanding that Life is fundamentally beyond our understanding and control. Yes, we control the very important options that are ours to manage but ultimately Life is about love and celebration and not about control or survival.

Despite the often fearful appearance of life—all is well. In its own way everyone and everything is moving toward willing and conscious participation with the One—perhaps over untold lifetimes. The eternal One is in love with the individual forms of time and each individual miracle being longs to know the One. Behind every longing, addiction and effort is the pain of the individual that feels lost, alone and cut loose from the reedbed.

There is no end to the Pain of Life just as there is no end to the Compassion and Wisdom that spring from this pain. They are inseparable pairs of opposites—this Great Love-Loss. In full conscious participation in the Life of the One this universe realizes its One Desire—knowing Itself as the Courage-Love of creature, creation and Creator.