Excerpt from A Return To Love by
Marianne Williamson
We’ve basically been taught that it’s our job as responsible adults to be active, to be
masculine in nature – to go out and get the job, to take control of our lives, to take the bull
by the horns. We’ve been taught that that’s our power. We think we’re powerful because of
what we’ve achieved rather than because of what we are. So we’re caught in a Catch-22: we
feel powerless to achieve until we already have.
If somebody comes along and suggests that we go with the flow, maybe lighten up a little,
we really feel hysterical. After all, we’re total underachievers as is, as far as we can see. The
last thing we can imagine doing is becoming any more passive than we already are.
Passive energy has its own kind of strength. Personal power results from a balance of
masculine and feminine forces. Passive energy without active energy becomes lazy, but
active energy without passive energy becomes tyrannous. An overdose of male, aggressive
energy is macho, controlling, unbalanced and unnatural. The problem is that aggressive
energy is what we’ve all been taught to respect. We’ve been taught that life was made for
quarterbacks so we exalt our masculine consciousness, which, when untempered by the
feminine, is hard. Therefore so are we – all of us, men and women. We’ve created a fight
mentality. We’re always fighting for something: for the job, the money, the relationship, to
get out of the relationship, to lose weight, to get sober, to get them to understand, to get
them to stay, to get them to leave, and on and on. We never put away our swords.
The feminine, surrendered place in us is passive. It doesn’t do anything. The spiritualisation
process – in men as well as women – is a feminisation process, a quieting of the mind. It is
the cultivation of personal magnetism.
Our feminine consciousness exerts its power through attraction rather than activity. This
attractive, receptive, feminine aspect of our consciousness is the space of mental surrender.
Surrender is not weakness or loss. It is a powerful non-resistance. Through openness and
receptivity on the part of human consciousness, spirit allowed to infuse our lives, to give
them meaning and direction.
When we stop trying to control events, they fall into natural order, an order that works.
We’re at rest while a power much greater than our own takes over, and it does a much
better job than we could have done. We learn to trust that the power that holds galaxies
together can handle the circumstances of our relatively little lives.
Surrender means, by definition, giving up attachment to results.
The Surrendered Life
To relax, to feel the love in your heart and keep to that as you focus in every situation –
that’s the meaning of spiritual surrender. It changes us. We become deeper, more attractive
people.
In Zen Buddhism, there’s a concept called “zen mind” or “beginner’s mind.” They say that
the mind should be like an empty rice bowl. If it’s already full, then the universe can’t fill it.
If it’s empty, it has room to receive. This means that when we think we have things already
figured out, we’re not teachable. Genuine insight can’t dawn on a mind that’s not open to
receive it. Surrender is a process of emptying the mind.
In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of ‘becoming as a little child.” Little children
don’t think they know what things mean. In fact, they know they don’t know. They ask
someone older and wiser to explain things to them. We’re like children who don’t know, but
we think we do.
The wise person doesn’t pretend to know what it’s impossible to know. “I don’t know” can
be an empowering statement. When we go into a situation not knowing, there is something
inside us which does. With our conscious mind, we step back in order that a higher power
within us can step forward and lead the way.
We need less posturing and more genuine charisma. Charisma was originally a religious
term, meaning “of the spirit” or “inspired.” It’s about letting God’s light shine through us.
It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’t buy. It’s an invisible energy with visible
effects. To let go, to just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper. Quite the contrary, it’s when
we truly become bright. We’re letting our own light shine.
We are meant to be this way. We are meant to shine. Look at small children. They’re all so
unique before they start trying to be, because they demonstrate the power of genuine
humility. This is also the explanation of beginners luck. When we go into a situation not
knowing the rules, we don’t pretend to know how to figure anything out, and we don’t
know yet what there is to be afraid of. This releases the mind to create from its own high
power. Situations shift gear and lights go on simply because our minds have opened up to
receive LOVE. We have gotten out of our own way.
Love is a win-mode, a successful and attractive vibration. We think that success is difficult,
and so, for us, it is. Success in life doesn’t have to involve negative tension. We don’t have to
be struggling all the time. The cultivation of mental rest, or surrender, is like eating healthy
food. It doesn’t give us an immediate rush, but over time it provides a lot more energy.
Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another
world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world
softens when we soften. The world loves when we choose to love the world.
Surrender means the decision to stop fighting the world, and to start loving it instead.