Red Room Where the Writers Are

I have probably written about surrender before and I'll likely write about it again. Its a very deep and rich subject and to be honest I don't think anyone really gets it. Personally I see it as searching for a needle in a haystack. The needle is true perception and the haystack is ego.

Surrender does not mean to give up. Giving up is for cowards, complainers, and the lazy. Surrender is actively pursuing a non-selfish attitude.

Did that make sense? Let me try to overcome my words.

Surrender does not mean you sacrifice yourself. It means devoting yourself to the ideal of ego-less existence.

Still not helping?

Surrender does not mean bending over and kissing your butt goodbye. Surrender means standing up, refusing to put your selfishness first and actively seeking to help yourself and others by doing healthy and positive things.

I have another try.

Surrender does not mean breaking yourself down. It means popping the overinflated sense of self that we suffer from and realizing that who we are does not depend on any qualities of mind or body.

This is the last one, I promise.

Surrender does not mean not fighting anymore. It means that we take the battle for our spirit into our heart and mind and we turn ourselves over to the awareness that enables us to function.

Tough subject, no?

My friend and I talk about this a lot. He's in South America now looking for himself so we haven't chatted in a while. I miss him. You guys have to be my surrogate Jan.

The hardest part with surrender is realizing that we can do nothing to change ourselves. There is not one damn thing we can do to better ourselves. The analogy I use with Jan is that of a watch. The universe is a giant clockwork. Its an enormous probability machine that runs on energy. Consciousness directs the energy and the energy tells consciousness what to manifest.

We are a biological machine within a machine. Some say we are a simulation. I think that's over simplifying it but a pretty accurate description nonetheless.

Our minds are machines that evolved as a method to survive significant hardship. That is why we are as smart as we are, because we had to compete with each other once we killed off the Neanderthal. We got so smart we became self aware.

We are self aware machines built in a probability engine frame work.

As machines we are limited in how much we can change our machinery. Sure we have some software like qualities in our brain. Surely we can modify our minds. But -- and this is a bold statement -- we can only make the software of our minds more complicated. WE CANNOT MAKE IT SIMPLER. We can write more code, take on more affliction. We can fight with each other, hate each other, love each other, and through this process make ourselves more complicated, more deep and often more crazy, but we cannot undo what has been done to us, what we've done to each other or what we've done to ourselves.

So the question my friend Jan asks at this point is: "So how can I stop this damn mind of mine without killing myself?"

The solution lies with the watchmaker. We are the watch, and yes, despite what some scientists say, there is a watchmaker and he has the ability to change our minds. He is the only one who can, because he is the only one who is not composed of the machinery that makes up the universe. He is beyond the machinery.

I don't want to make the fundies too happy so let me add that the watchmaker is also all the machinery. After all how could he build such a grand machine? He utilized himself of course. So that means that everything we perceive and also all that which is beyond conception is also the watchmaker.

I use the term watchmaker here because my friend Jan was raised by fundies. (I use this term to describe self described fundamentalist who abuse the concept of God instead of worshiping him) Jan's parents made him think that he should be punished by god for being bad. God does not punish us. We punish ourselves and we teach our children how to punish themselves. That is the only reason that affliction exists. But that is a topic for another day.

So then how does this tie to surrender?

We surrender to the watchmaker. We devote ourselves to the goal of his experiment we call reality.

What is the goal of this machine?

To bring peace to chaos. This ginormous probability engine runs on chaos and it is only through organization of energies that reality can function at all. We are organized mechanical chaos and the watchmaker wants to see if we can become so organized and efficient that we can overcome chaos and find true peace.

Sound daunting? Well it is very daunting and choosing this path is challenging. Because you see we must become aware of everything to find true peace. That means we have to explore the deepest darkest caverns of our own minds and shine a light on all the things we find there to enable ourselves to find peace.

We perceive that process as painful. And it is. But pain is just a symbol of healing. So shining light in all those caverns heals us, makes us whole and makes us healthy inwardly and outwardly.