How To Live In God's Will

It doesn't seem to be a one-time thing, that surrender.

Not a one-time thing. At this moment, do you trust Him? That He will take care of things? 5%, 10%, half the way, all of it, or much more than you can imagine?

100%, but I... yes... no, no, no, it's not that kind of 'but.' Shouldn't I also let go of the idea of what things should be? I don't know what the solution is. I don't know exactly that part of the problem.

Okay, let me put it this way. If a magic genie came to your house and he showed you anything that you wanted, you were just doing this, then would you worry about your present concern? If that genie was just there with you? I have to expand on that, I can't afford to leave the story halfway. But you would say, 'Ah, wow, this is fantastic! I have got all my worldly concerns now, I can leave them to this genie and he will provide for me everything that I could ask for.' So let me call that a 50% trust, because you're no longer worried about the outcome; whatever you want is available to you. You've come to this amazing place, you see. That 50% surrender is where 'I just have to wish it and it's mine.' If I want my house situation, my life situation, whatever situation—He fixes it. It's, in fact, too easy for Him to fix. So He says, 'Tell me something hard' to everything that you throw at Him.

So that is the halfway point. And why is it the halfway? Because soon you might realize that 'I'm not really capable of asking for anything worthy of this Being.' My ideas themselves are so limited. My construct of what my life is, itself, is so limited. So is it possible that I tell Him that 'Whatever You want to give, You decide that also, because I can't decide'?

And I resonate a lot with what you're saying right now, Father. Sometimes I'm confused when in Satsang we pray for outcomes, because that resonates less. It's harder to...

It's all part of the process. It's all part of the process, so don't worry about that. Even that we have to leave to God. So whether it is halfway surrender or full surrender, it is better than trusting ourselves for both the problem definition and the resolution. So you're saying to me that you want both the problem definition and the resolution of any such problems to belong to God?

Yes. I think what I want the most is to just hear Him moment to moment, follow Him moment to moment.

Yeah. So that now is not like praying for outcomes. It is: 'I don't know.' Because how He should answer your prayer is then defined by me, and therefore I'm in that half-surrender where I'm saying that 'This is how I want my problem to be resolved.' On one hand is the most supremely intelligent, most loving Being; on the other end is the most foolish little nobody. They are sitting in front of you—who would you ask your questions of?

So what do most of us do most of the time? When we say we trust in ourselves, we are not talking about the higher Self; we are talking about our mind, which is a primitive, tiny instrument. And we force and force. You know what worry is? Worry is just forcing our mind beyond its capacity. That's what stress is, no? The mind, poor thing, just wants to do A-B-C, and we go to it for planning about the future and the meaning of life and how to lead a true life, you see? So then it is beyond its capacity.

How should we surrender? How should we trust? Our usual lamentation is: 'I'm bringing this to You, why don't I hear Your solution?' Do you feel that if God wanted us to hear a solution, there is something we could do to stop it from happening? Like God is trying to tell us, God is saying 'I want this child to know this,' and then because we are blocked or we are mental, then all that will get in the way and God has no way to communicate with us? It's just blocked? Very popular notion, isn't it? That the Lord of this universe, for whom all of this is nothing, could not say what He wants to say, tell us what He wants to tell us in the most obvious, most direct way? If that was what He wanted, what would stop Him? Do you think that we can really block Him if we're fully mental also?

I'm going to again complete this story, okay? Suppose you are fully mental. Ananta is sitting like a fool, like always, and he's just lost in his mind and caught up. So then God obviously has lost all ways to communicate with him? He's lost? Is it like that? If God wanted to communicate with him, He could pause this world, He could say 'Stop here,' He could show Himself in whichever way He wanted and come and have a conversation. But if that's what He wanted... so what could be the reason that He doesn't do that? Does He love us a little less? So He has no time? We looked at all of those things.

But doesn't it happen that we can't hear Him because we are too involved with our mind? I can't help...

Yes, so that's exactly what I'm asking. If He wanted to communicate with us, He would communicate in every single way. Isn't that a form of communication too? Just to prove to us that if we keep involved with our minds, we're not going to be able to hear Him? Yeah. So if He is doing that, what would be, in our tiny human way, what would we make of that intention?

I didn't get the question.

Yes. So first, this point is clear: that if He wanted to communicate with us, really wanted to communicate with us, nothing could come in His way. He could come in a burning bush and start talking to us. In Indian spirituality and history, there are millions of ways in which God has communicated with people. So when He really wants to, nothing can stop Him. But we are saying that... how is it? One very beautiful thing I heard today: that if we are feeling distant from God, who has moved? Has God moved away from us? He hasn't moved away from us. So what is that moving then?

So what we are saying is that there seems to be a lesson for us. Because if God wanted to communicate, He could communicate in any way; nothing could stop Him. But He is saying that you must get over yourself. You must stop relying on yourself. You must stop thinking of yourself as powerful enough to resolve your life. You must stop relying on this tiny, primitive mind and make yourself available for Me, and then I will commune with you. But does that mean that is a restriction on Him? It is just what He wants us to learn. Are we getting this point? That the All-Powerful One can never be stopped from anything. He's not sitting there waiting, saying, 'Oh, I'm being blocked because this child is fully egotistical now, what do I do?' No, He's teaching us how to live. He's teaching us how to live in faith, in trust, and teaching us how to drop our individual will and trust His will. And if that is not so, then He is not the God that we are praising; He's not the God that we are claiming Him to be.

It's a very subtle point. I hope you're getting it somewhere, and after a while it becomes very obvious, actually. But initially it can seem a bit subtle because all of us seem to have this notion that we are stopping God. You cannot stop God. He can stop this universe in one click. We can't stop Him. If He wanted, He could just... you step out into a balcony and then we would see up in the night sky, He would write down the words like they were stars for us to see. It's nothing for Him. It's nothing at all. But so we must not place that kind of limitation on Him, saying 'He's trying to tell me something but I'm blocking His will.' No, He's trying to teach us how to come into a loving relationship with Him and live in the space of His presence so that we don't become proud and think that any of it is our doing.

So one way to deepen in our love and surrender to God is to look for how we are placing a limitation on Him. Once you recognize that nothing is a boundary or limit for Him—all of these dream plays, His Leela, His Maya—then we change the question to: 'In this moment, in this challenging time, in these weeks, months, whatever, what is He trying to show me? What can I learn from this?' And we can learn usually that when we leave all doership, experiences, problems, resolutions, all what needs to happen—we honestly endeavor to offer everything up to Him full-heartedly, not keeping an eye on the outcome—then we find ourselves in a deeper relationship, in a deeper love with God, than when we think we have some power, we can do something, we can think about things and resolve them.

So one thing which is coming is that it's very popular, very, very popular in India also, to say, 'I don't want to bother God with this, this is too small to take to God.' This is a very mistaken human construct that we have applied to God because we are feeling like God has got a limited amount of time, so if I take this tiny thing to Him, it'll be wasting His time. It's just not possible like that. And it makes us egotistical and reliant on a self which in actuality doesn't exist. But even while it seems to exist, it is the most primitive, caveman-type self, very, very basic in its functioning. So we don't have to go to the foolish one when the Lord of the universe is available for us. So please, from today, don't apply this construct at all that 'this is too small, I can't take it to God.' What does that mean? 'I'll do it myself'? No, you can't. Is it so? The return to innocence is to take everything to Him. Everything already belongs to Him, but we have taken false ownership. This is a way of offering it back.

It's clear that He's showing me more and more that I can't do anything. Just like you're saying right now, the smallest thing... I don't remember it being like that in the past, but now it's like, okay, I'm completely helpless without Him. But I do feel a little stuck, Father, because I don't feel equipped to follow Him moment to moment, and that creates suffering—that you don't feel equipped.

Yes, and again I want to repeat that I'm not speaking from a place of perfection or that I have climbed this mountain. It just seems to me that this is what all of us need to learn, and I'm sharing from that perspective. And could there be times where I also feel that I don't know how to do this? There could be. So all of us are in the process of learning together. So let's not put that pressure on ourselves saying, 'I've been in this for so long, when am I going to come to that complete trust?' Maybe never for all of us. Is there such a thing as complete trust? I haven't met one who we could judge in that way, saying that 'this one has complete trust 100%.' But as long as we are learning to trust more and more, that is all that we can do.

Can you take this through what you say? In a moment where you understand that you don't want to worry about this, you want to take it to God, what do you say to God?

What would I say to God? Okay, so let's say that I'm concerned about what is happening to the Satsang, all of my children—and it could be one of you or all of you. I would just say to Him, 'God, see what is happening to my children.' So I'm realizing more and more that God doesn't want us to be fancy; He just wants us to be simple. So we don't have to have a special mechanism that 'I will light this special lamp and then I will do this special process and then I will do this and then He'll hear me.' If all of that process is there, it's fine; it is for us to not be so noisy, to be able to be with Him, to behold Him and to be held by Him. I'm not against the process, but it's not that He needs that process.

How would I talk about my problems with God? I would say that this particular thing is bothering me, please Father. As simple as possible. Keeping all knowledge aside, keeping all pride aside—not all, but as much as we can. Suppose something is very noisy; then who does that block? Does that block Him from knowing what we want and what we are stuck with, or does that block ourselves from feeling His love in some way? And if He wanted us to feel that love even in a noisy mind, for Him it's nothing. But He wants to—apparently, this is what it seems like to me—He's trying to teach us a way of life which is full of innocence and a childlike wonder, a childlike joy, which I feel like is a gift that He wants to give us. But He doesn't want to force the gift on us. That classic example: if your children were forced to say 'I love you' and forced to be with you, then is it really love and being together? So it can't be a force. All of these are lessons in love, deepening in love.

Suppose you had a two-year-old child. Now, at two years old, they're in that stage starting to make seeming choices and actually just being very dependent on their parent. Suppose you are a two-year-old child and the child is just going about their way, not looking at you. Suddenly the child stops, turns towards you, runs and gives you a big hug and kisses your face. What do we feel when that happens? It's beautiful. Now, if you had forced the child to come—you picked him up and then said 'Okay'—that's also sweet, and as parents we are entitled to do that, but it's not the same, isn't it? So is the child fully dependent on the parent? Of course. Can anything happen unless it is the will of the parent? It won't happen. But these movements, this expression of love, is completely something that within His greater will we have the power to exert, you see? Are you getting a sense of what I'm sharing? This letting go of our lives, which we think we own or we think we are responsible for—it is rightfully to offer back that which is God's to Him, to do with us as He would please.

The intention is clearly there. The execution is very poor, I think.

Very poor for all of us. Maybe in my case both the intention and the execution are poor, but as long as there is some sliver of it, we are okay. As long as there's a sliver of that intention, there's a sliver of that execution, and both are important because love is in the acts. We may say 'I love God so much,' but if I don't make it into a verb, I don't make it into an action, then it's just lip service mostly. So if your will is to rush and speak to seven people about something and solve a problem, to say 'No, I want to rely on God and wait to see how He is guiding me, how He is going to move me'—that movement back into silence is an act of love, is an act of trust, is an act of devotion, surrender.