Quotes about Surrender

Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions.  It means loving in the deepest sense of the word.  The truth is that we don't want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.

When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves--from other people, relationships, or material goods--or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion. But according to Buddhism, such a strategy is doomed. Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection.

The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.

Surrender to life itself and you'll just be rewarded with so many things. And I've been rewarded so many times, in so many mysterious ways. So I have no reason to be disappointed with anything.

Surrender had played out for good with me.

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

Never surrender opportunity for security.

If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.

Art is nothing but the expression of our dream; the more we surrender to it the closer we get to the inner truth of things, our dream-life, the true life that scorns questions and does not see them.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

Death is afraid of such powerful brahmacharins who come of their own accord to his door. This stems from a very basic principle of nature. Whatever you treasure most, you love most, desire most in life, and would liike to have, would like to keep, you turn away from it a little, surrender it a little and it will remain yours. On the opposite hand, whatever you detest most in life, absolutely dislike, just turn to it a little and it will stay away from you. It is the principle of innoculation. It applies to all sciences. Poison is cured by poison. Everything is its own antidote. So life has death built into it. The only way to master death is not to run away from it, but to turn to it a little, recognize it daily.

When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blessed.

He knows what He is doing with me. I cannot always understand His way, but I am content in the realization that He knows what is best. That is surrender.

The hurt that we embrace becomes joy.

Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes, running through the mountains, drinking poison, and now quitely choosing annihilation.

There are love stories, and there is obliteration into love.  You've been walking the ocean's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry.  You must dive naked under, and deeper under, a thousand times deeper!

Inhale, and God approaches you.  Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you.  Exhale, and you approach God.  Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God. 

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop
your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not
to surrender, that is strength.

To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.

During the sitting, when the eyes closed the body relaxed and seemed to turn to warm liquid with all vestiges of the worries and anxiety of earlier oozing away and falling into a deep state of peace. After some while it felt as if I was looking into the abyss of nothingness. I felt the surrender and the possibility of dying was a natural next step. Give all of it up and drown in the Oneness of God. I knew that was all I had ever wanted. It was at that stage that all the build-up of the mindbody package that I knew to be "me/myself/I" seemed to slip off and was moved to the side, sort of floating to the left. Then the eyes opened and it was as if nothing had changed, yet with the feeling that everything had transformed irreversibly. Utterly unable to place what had actually happened, and with no desire to place it.

We know the motion of our true nature by the open embrace and empty surrender and acceptance of everything as it is.

Today is the Earth Days first breath

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

Opening to our fear is an act of intimacy, a courageous welcoming of the disfigured and outcast into the living room of our being. Opening thus is also an act of surrender. As such, it is not a dissolution - or collapsing - or personal boundaries, as in submission, but rather an expanding of them.

In submission, we deaden ourselves, sinking into the shallows; in surrender, we enliven ourselves, dying into a deeper Life. In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch. Submission flattens the ego; surrender transcends it. Submission is passive, but surrender is dynamic. - Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, p. 30-31

Opening to our fear is an act of intimacy, a courageous welcoming of the disfigured and outcast into the living room of our being. Opening thus is also an act of surrender. As such, it is not a dissolution - or collapsing - or personal boundaries, as in submission, but rather an expanding of them.

In submission, we deaden ourselves, sinking into the shallows; in surrender, we enliven ourselves, dying into a deeper Life. In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch. Submission flattens the ego; surrender transcends it. Submission is passive, but surrender is dynamic.

Love isn't as simple as you wish it would be. On the other hand, it's nowhere near as complicated as you fear it is. My advice to you is to extinguish any itch you might have to compel love to serve any agenda whatsoever. Instead, bow down before it with all the innocence you can muster, and declare yourself ready to be its humble student and servant. Celebrate through surrender.

As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Roar, Lion of the Heart, and tear me open!

They are the chosen ones
who have surrendered.