THE LAZARIS MATERIAL

Surrendering the Separation: Surrender without Submission

Q. Hi, Jach. The September workshop in LA, "Lemurian Nights," was beyond words, beautiful, and profound. Lazaris talked of "surrendering the separation." They were talking of the "I" and the "me" and to experience rather than describe the experiences. Can you talk a bit more about that?

JACH:

LOL ... Boy, I wish I could! [vbg]

Admitting that I don't know that much about it, let me say this [s]: The concept of surrender is older than old. It is a concept in most religions and philosophies both of the East and West. Many take it as surrendering yourself to God or to some Higher Authority and the like. Early on, Lazaris would talk about that and encourage us not to surrender self to someone or something else. He talked about surrendering to the moment or surrendering to the WILL of God (meaning God/Goddess/All That Is) in a particular moment (in a particular intersection of space/time in consciousness), but he discouraged surrendering self to another, no matter who that other was.

For many years, I have not heard the word surrender in his discussions. It came up this year when he talked of "Intimacy That Works: Union , Co-Union, Communion." I think that was the first workshop where he talked of surrender without submission. I think it came up again during "Passion's Secret: The Mystery and Magic of Boundless Love."

Coming up twice, I figured it was important, and as I thought about it, surrender is a vital part of the paradox of intimacy. In that paradox, we need to take a stand and be committed to our stand, and in the very next moment be willing to give up our stand without abandoning our commitment. We need to draw the line beyond which we will not go in one moment and be willing to give up that line for the other in another moment. Yes, it's a paradox. And surrender is integral to its resolution. And the phrase surrender without submission ... oh my, now that does feel a whole lot better, and it fits so much better with my previous cautions about surrendering myself.

During the evening on fulfillment (going into the "Lemurian Remembrance" intensive), the idea came up again very strongly. The key to fulfillment is surrender, Lazaris said. Surrendering without submission, and surrendering without self-abandonment, self-betrayal, self-humiliation, or self-rejection. Wow.

And then there is that idea of surrendering our separateness. As I have thought about that, this is a huge one. Such surrender sounds simple, but I think it can be one of the most magnificent and majestic things we can ever do. We have been on a journey of "going home" that was a journey of forgetting (not fun) and separating (both not fun and very fun). We have learned a lot about being separate from our world, from each other, and from ourselves. And as painful as it is, we often try to assuage that pain with more separateness ... defining ourselves as separate from the pain, for example.

We are aware that we have a Self-I and Ego-I, and we need to sense and work with them separately, but do we look to put them back together again? Or do we seek to keep them separated? How often have we longed to act solely as our Self-I would and to function as though we had no ego (no Ego-I) at all? There is the "I" who observes and analyzes. And there is the "I" who experiences -- the one Lazaris referenced as "me" during the evening workshop. How quickly do we rush back to be "I"? How quickly do we abandon "me"? We talk of experiencing life and embracing life, but as much as we love that, how much more do we love analyzing the experience and analyzing the embrace? We like separation. Separation gives us a sense of security. I could go on. But I won't.

I am just thinking these things through for the first time in the last week or two, and tonight. I am not sure of any of this. I might recant all of this later on. [vbg] But for now it makes sense to me. To surrender our separateness ... first we need to define our separateness ... our specific, individual separateness. Then I think we need to experience it. It seems to me, we need to involve Self-I and Ego-I ... our ego needs to be a part of this.

And we need to engage "I" and "me". We can move toward seeing beyond our separateness ... we are all one, we are all part of one another. All of this is an illusion of our individual, if not independent, creations. Love is one, all is one. Yes, our Self-I and I, the observer, can see beyond the separation and describe it beautifully and poetically. Those parts of us can describe beyond separateness in an accurate and inspiring way. We can long for and pursue that oneness or that "whatever it is" beyond separation, and we can do it with our Self-I and our observer I.

But what about the Ego-I? What about "me"? Are we really willing to surrender our separateness? I don't think it comes easily. We want to talk about it. We want to plan on it. But I think we want to maintain our separateness. We may step beyond it, but we want to come back and talk about it. We want to think about it ourselves, and we want to tell others what it was like to experience "beyond separation."

It seems to me (I will speak for myself here [s]) that if I truly surrendered my separateness, I would not know, would never have known, the thing I surrendered. If I totally surrender my separateness, there would no longer be any separateness to surrender. It would not exist; it never would have existed. It gets pretty Escheresque. It gets pretty surreal.

So I am not saying Lazaris suggested something that is impossible to do. I am saying that I think it is tough to do. It is really, really hard ... way hard. [s] But when we can do it ... oh, man! And in our attempts to do it ... to surrender our separateness ... even when we don't succeed, in that moment ... in that precious moment, we can truly live life. And we can be touched by God/Goddess/All That Is. And we can spark the inherent energy of fulfillment in each of us. I remember what Lazaris said of the resistances. One of them: We think we will find fulfillment in a thing. It is not there; it is not inherent in any thing. It is, however, a seed, a spark, in us. That sounds like a tired cliché. And without substance and meaning, and without a means of awakening that spark, it is nothing more than a tired cliché.

But when we can work with surrender without submission, when we can surrender our separateness, a chain reaction beyond ... beyond us ... can ignite that spark of fulfillment. And then fulfillment can be reflected in more and more ... in everything we do.

I stop where I begin: I haven't thought all this through nor considered all the ramifications and potential contradictions, but this is where I am about this concept at this point. I hope this has been helpful. Thanks for asking and "forcing" me to think a bit more about it all. [s]

Q. Will you talk about the activity of surrendering to our Higher Selves, or Soul, etc., without submitting? Thank you!

JACH:

Well, I will say something about that: I have a lot more thinking to do about it. I first heard Lazaris speak of surrendering without submission when he talked of intimacy in relationship to union, co-union, and communion. When I heard it then, a ripple of recognition zipped through me. I had a sense of the beauty of the phrase, but more of the beauty of the concept. When I encounter beauty in this fashion, I get very excited. I usually laugh out loud and get up and walk around for a while (to run off the excitement). I laughed when I heard the phrase, "surrender without submission." I walked around a lot.

Then Lazaris talked of it again when he spoke of fulfillment. I find the concept and the reality of fulfillment to be mightily intriguing. It's downright fascinating to me. I find the power of fulfillment to be like a magic potion or a magical elixir. I think the magic of fulfillment, more than the sensation itself, is immensely powerful.

But anyway, I heard the idea of surrendering without submitting again, and once again I laughed and walked around awhile. Since then, I have been working with it. The first thing that I heard from Lazaris (during the fulfillment evening) was that first we had to have a solid sense of self. We could not surrender without submission if we didn't have a clearly-defined and boundaried self. We needed something of substance in hand in order NOT to submit it. If we didn't have a solid sense of self, then submission would be a slippery slope ... perhaps too slippery.

So to me, the first component of this surrendering is to establish a new and renewed sense of self. Now, we all have been sensing our sense of self for decades. At first there doesn't seem to be anything new there. In fact, saying that we need to establish a sense of self can sound absolutely boring. It does to me anyway. But then it occurs to me: This is the Year of Union. And it occurs to me that a sense of self needs clearly-defined boundaries, and that sense of self needs to be bound by those boundaries. And it needs to be bonded. Yeah, union involves binding (being bound) and bonding ... It also involves alliances.

So I conclude that to surrender without submission begins with creating self-union. That would mean consciously creating an alliance with aspects of my self; binding that alliance and those components of me with love, and then bonding them with ... loyalty. Yeah. That seems right to me.

Once I renew that union with myself ... once I state it in words and voice it in action ... once I renew it consciously, now I have a self worthy of surrendering. Now, the trick is not to submit that self... not to abandon it or desert it. In there is choice. Yeah, I think it can be that obvious.

So here it is ... I gather myself in union. I go to be in the presence of my Higher Self, if that is the energy to which I am about to surrender. And I make the statement of my intention: surrendering to you, but I will not submit to you.

And then I take the next step, which is to lean ... fully lean upon my Higher Self. Yes. This has a visual component, but mostly it's emotional. I totally let go emotionally and mentally. I totally let go spiritually. I absolutely surrender to my Higher Self. I abandon my thoughts and feelings. I abandon my desires and needs. I abandon the past. I abandon the future. Yeah, all those nifty futures that I am crafting -- works in progress -- I just let them go. I abandon them. No, I don't reject them; I abandon them. See, I abandon all these things but ... I will not abandon myself. In that moment I will abandon all my dreams and visions, but I will not abandon myself.

To me that is currently what it means to surrender without submission. But check with me in six months, my concepts of all this may be very different. We are entering the Year of Illumination. I suspect a lot of my ideas will be shifting or deepening or changing in the "light" of illumination. [s]