Rocks

January 30, 2024

Another stepping stone is our spiritual practice of surrender. When we are in a mire and need to get above it, our spiritual practice of surrender is a stepping stone to freedom.

My ego and its desires are overwhelming. It has good ideas, with many good strategies and plans. Yet, when operating on its own, it can be a stumbling block. Our egos make us "slaves of wishes" that might accomplish much, but without the leadership of the soul, they bar our soul's advancement.

My ego rightly deserves many things, according to its values of fairness and rightness. The problem is that my ego's story is not how reality always goes. In fact, my story is frequently radically different from reality. I can get so caught up in my wishes that I lose sight of what matters to my soul.

Our regular spiritual practice reminds us that our ego can react in anger, resentment, low self-esteem, inflation, hopelessness, aggression, and self-destruction in reaction to its story not materializing. Fortunately, our regular spiritual practice allows us to see our wishes in light of the ego's relentless fight to make them come true.

The only way to stop the suffering caused by the ego's thwarted wishes is to surrender our entire story. This is tricky because our story isn't "bad"; it may be full of goodness and beauty. But the fact is that some of it will never come true. Some of it will be the opposite of what we hoped, regardless of how beautiful it may be.

Reality can vaporize our ego's story in a millisecond. And by the same token, reality can create things more beautiful than our ego could have imagined. The answer is to go ahead, hope, and wish, but surrender all hopes and desires to the one True Source of All Being through the power of the soul.

Inquiry: Why would you not surrender your hopes and wishes?

Dear God,

I do not understand why some beautiful things do not come to pass and, worse, why they come to pass, but we lose them. But the me who doesn't understand why is my ego who wants to be in charge; in truth, dear God, my soul surrenders to reality without fighting it. My soul trusts the larger plan. I pray for my ego to submit to my soul, so I may walk on the stepping stones to freedom. Amen

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