TO FORFEIT MY LIFE
Despite my prayer for complete surrender, how much do I hold back? It's an interesting question and one I must confront with brutal honesty if I'm to move forward. I've prayed the prayer, penned many lofty, ambitious thoughts to that effect, and yet it's clear I'm not entirely on board with the full implications of what I've requested. This is painfully apparent in many of my entries. When I lament over the past - at how everything was taken from me, with no seeming end to the pain or the aimless wandering, the resentment is conspicuously evident. When I agonize over the future - at how my prospects are virtually nil or entirely unseemly for a person of my former standing, the vanity obviously persists.
The story of the Rich Young Ruler comes up again and again, and for good reason it would seem. As a young Christian, I would read this story affirming I'd give up whatever was necessary to follow Christ - never really believing he would ask for everything. As a young mystic, I prayed for complete dependence and surrender, still not recognizing what that ultimately means. For the past couple years, since the collapse, I've struggled to let go, to make peace with what complete dependence can sometimes mean. It's clear that when I first prayed for this dependence - to be one with the Father, to desire only what he desires, to say or do only what he would have me say or do - I had no idea what that really meant. When Paul says he's no longer alive - that the man he was, with his own ambitions and volition, is no more - but that what lives in him now is Christ, the implications of this are truly staggering.
All to often, I find within myself a highly conditional surrender:
Father, there are certain pillars of my life you absolutely cannot touch. In fact, the assumption of their exclusion is so implicit, it hardly warrants mentioning. However, within the bounds I've set forth for you, you may have free reign. I commit to you 100% of my surrender over 10% of my life. Do anything to destabilize the other 90%, however, and you'll lose me. Under no circumstances are you to impact my pursuit of your blessed, American, plugged-in dream. That's off limits. Put a shiny, new mystical wrapper on me, but leave that out of this. If you can use me within the scope of those parameters, I'm all yours.
These conditions are never uttered in so many words. In fact, my words would indicate the opposite. It's not in word or thought that my resistance rears up, but in the unconscious reaction to having God completely obliterate my comfort zone. When it came to answering my prayer, he's had no regard for personal space or stipulations. Finally, after many, many months of trials, I'm beginning to understand.
The unconscious mind can't be reasoned with. Surrender can't be injected into it as a concept. It doesn't pay to address it with persuasive or powerful arguments. It's language isn't words, but experiences. It learns inductively by living, drawing out general or universal applications from particular events. If I pray to live as Jesus or Paul lived - not my, but Christ's life in me - my old life, my old, false self, must be surrendered and that surrender doesn't come easy. That total surrender must be lived and it must be real. I'm only now starting to appreciate this, which casts the past couple years in a new light. They weren't a waste; they were preparation, and I'm beginning to recognize their effects. I think maybe they've been here for some time, but my resistance and despair shrouded them. I move forward from here with my eyes open, looking forward to what comes next.