Surrendering to whom?

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JUST THINKING AND FEELING

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In his latest column, DR ICHAK K. ADIZES challenges us all to learn to listen to what feels right and wrong in the heart. He encourages us to find God’s will within ourselves.

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It is a corner stone of many religions and spiritual practices to prescribe surrendering to God or His representative. For instance, in the Catholic religion it is the Pope. His decision is final and to be adhered to. In India, there is a proliferation of gurus who claim that they know God’s will, and people follow their decisions religiously.

There is a benefit in surrendering to the wishes of a guru. Once you surrender, you emancipate yourself from the terror the ego imposes on you. You surrender to the Master who will make the decisions for you. The danger is that you subordinate your will to someone else, and retreat from being an adult and taking responsibility for your actions. Furthermore, what if the person we surrender to is corrupt, like the guru of Jonestown, who ordered all his disciples to commit suicide, and they did? Is that what we want?

The true Master to surrender to is God. I believe all religions share this prescription. But what does it mean to surrender to God’s will? And what is that will? To whom to surrender if not to a human guru? Some interpret it to follow religiously the “manual,” whether it is the Koran or the Torah or the New Testament.

That is blind surrendering to the written word, and the danger is that some people go through the motions, follow the rituals, but not the spirit. Some of the most corrupt people can be the most “religious”; they attend church or the mosque or the ashram, but do not practice the spirit.

So how can we surrender to God?

To “hear” God’s will, do not follow blindly the “manual,” the book of instructions of the organized religion. Do not think what it is. Just let the heart tell you what feels right or not.

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Just let the heart tell you
what feels right or not.

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Some people think that their thoughts are theirs. They truly represent them.

I suggest our thoughts are not just ours. We absorb what the media tells us is right, what our peers tell us is wrong, we pick up thoughts on the street, we pick up thoughts derived from experiences good and bad starting with our childhood, from our dreams about the future, and from who knows where else. So, not all our thoughts are just ours. What is genuinely ours is not easy to carve out by thinking. That is why many people wonder, even for a lifetime, “Who am I, really?” and “What do I really want?”

I suggest that what we feel in our heart is uniquely ours. That is who we really are. And through the heart we connect to God, to whom we should surrender.

When we meditate and listen to the heart, we get an answer to problems we did not know the answer to. For this, we need to block the interrupting noise of our thoughts.

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And what is that voice that is whispering to us from the heart when we are calm enough and willing to listen? What is it telling us? It tells us which decision feels right and which feels wrong. Your heart knows. You know.

Never disempower yourself. We need to unite with the Guru, with the human Master. We might choose to practice the rituals of a religion, but not at the cost of nullifying ourselves or, worse, not listening to God’s will communicated directly to us through the heart when we meditate.

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Never disempower yourself.
We need to unite with the Guru, with the human Master.
We might choose to practice the rituals of a religion,
but not at the cost of nullifying ourselves or, worse,
not listening to God’s will communicated
directly to us through the heart when we meditate.

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Bottom line: Listen to your heart. When in doubt, let whomever you trust interpret the absolute values of God and help you understand His will. In the process, grow spiritually, but never ever do anything your heart tells you not to do.

I think organized religion has failed us, and many gurus are false spiritual leaders. The true portal to God is not the prayer books nor the guru’s darshan. It is time we decentralized religion and each person finds for himself or herself God’s will by meditating through the heart. Try Heartfulness. https://gum.co/uBhXl. I do.

Just thinking and feeling it,
Ichak Kalderon Adizes

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Article by DR. ICHAK ADIZES

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