Page 17 - All India Magazine May-2023

The Process of Surrender

True surrender is a difficult thing.
For example, you have decided to offer your life to the Divine,
you take that decision. But all of a sudden, something altogether
unpleasant, unexpected happens to you and your first movement
is to react and protest. Yet you have made the offering, you have
said once for all: “My life belongs to the Divine”, and then sud-
denly an extremely unpleasant incident happens (that can hap-
pen) and there is something in you that reacts, that does not want
it. But here, if you want to be truly logical with your offering, you
must bring forward this unpleasant incident, make an offering of
it to the Divine, telling him very sincerely: “Let Your will be done; if
You have decided it that way, it will be that way.” And this must be
a willing and spontaneous adhesion. So it is very difficult.
Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping
with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of
an opposite reaction coming in — spontaneously, irresistibly, you
draw back: “No, not that” — if you have made a complete surren-
der, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are
as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other. And per-
haps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in
a certain way, but if it happens differently, you find that this also
is all right. You might have, for example, worked very hard to do
a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have
given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all
that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is
the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble,
done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other
way round, it does not succeed.
If you are truly surrendered, you say: “It is good, it is all good,
it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my
decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what
He decides.” On the other hand, if you do not have this deep

All India Magazine, May 2023 17