Surrender

Surrender 1 – Obedience/Submission

The infant arrives needing everything to survive in the new world and relies on other humans to provide this: care, food, shelter, safety, security. Their vulnerability and reliance on all others is not of their choosing, and they are indeed helpless in this initial developmental state. There is Divine Planning and Divine Order here, as in all things; in order to experience fully we arrive in a pure form, one that will be further created through the assimilation of information we gain in our experiences.

Surrender is ultimately a state of pure freedom, and there are many steps, many leaves of progression that occur before we are able to reach this level of spiritual openness, a state of surrender in which we choose to allow on all levels.

The infant predominantly helpless and defenseless succumbs to whatever is offered, whatever exists in their immediate environment. The initial learnings of Submission and Obedience occur on a daily, even 24-hour basis, and if these are accompanied by loving, healthful, positive overtures, the infant begins to associate obedience/submission with reward and the satisfying of needs.

Surrender 2 – Obedience/Assimilation

As we grow and develop we process the environment and world around us. We translate these learnings into knowledge and choose how to respond and act in certain ways.

As a young child we grow away from powerless, unquestioned surrender and become part of a family or unit or “tribe”, indoctrinated into group norms and cultural expectations. For much of our childhood and adolescent years, and even sometimes into adulthood, what we believe is what we have been told, taught, shown or lived in our younger lives.

Essential to this phase of life is obedience, a conscious choice to respond, conform and be like others. Adopting and adapting to the norms of the unit and the cultural/societal world which surrounds you is basic survival instinct. Compliance with expectations for intrinsic or extrinsic rewards can strengthen our beliefs that we are “good” by imitation. Still, in the mind, the id and ego engage in their own conflicting dialogues and our spirit, the higher self, is suppressed in expressing its needs of authenticity by default.

Find All Sally’s Books

“Every Flower is a Soul Blossoming in Nature”

[Gerard de Nerval]