This morning I had planned to go to a craft market to sell my artworks. But my ignition failed on my car and I'm going nowhere. When I returned to the house to have a cup of coffee and figure out what the day would turn out to look like instead, I realized that it's not in my control and the best thing I can do is surrender to the process and be open to the opportunities that the day holds.
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| Abstract painting, "Progression". (c) 2011 SZing. All rights reserved. |
This is not unlike the process of doing artwork or painting. It also applies to most businesses. And it certainly applies to our spiritual living. We do not have the entire blueprint. We are only given what I refer to as "marching orders" and have the tiny corner of the overall plan. We can use our free-will to determine how best to carry out our marching orders, but fighting the marching orders only prolongs the pain.
I could have come inside and been so upset that my day's plan was messed up and allowed that to cause my entire day to be blown apart. I could have fretted and fussed and tried to "make" it work out--although in this instance, short of hiring a taxi, there really isn't much I could do today to get things working out how I wanted and expected them to be.
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| Abstract Painting, "Conflict of Interest", (c) 2010, SZing. All rights reserved. |
One of the reasons I love the Painting Experience that I attended this past weekend is that I have learned to (mostly) surrender to the process. I will admit it is only through some rather painful and wrenching resistance in the past that I learned this hard-won lesson. What I found by surrendering to the process is that it "shushes" the inner critic and the inner control freak because I listen, acknowledge their contributions and they go away. In the act of surrendering, I am able to hear and see clearly what the next step in the process needs to be--whether that is a change of paintbrush, loading the brush with a new paint color--like maroon or red instead of green--or if the next step is an image or idea of some particular item that comes into consciousness and must be added to the whole. In one case, this was a goat. It hung out in the back of my brain the entire time I was painting and was the last thing I put into the painting, but I honored it and gave it its place. Had I refused to do so, not only would my painting have been incomplete and felt incomplete, there is a very good chance that I would have become stuck or frustrated and perhaps done something drastic like paint over the painting in order to avoid the issue of the goat.
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| Abstract Painting, "Monsoon Season." (c) 2010, SZing. All rights reserved. |
In the past, the word “surrender” held
negative connotations of ideas of suffering, limitation, lack, or loss. It meant giving up something valuable and implied
there would be pain of some sort.
Over the years, I developed a new way
of looking at and allowing surrender. I
see surrender as the restoration of my spirit to its divine and original state—a
cleansing of sorts from the day-to-day will power that the human “I” tries to
exert upon my world. There is joy in the
release from the pressure of having to “make” things happen. Surrender moves beyond my human self/will to
allow the power and presence of the Source to flow and guide my thoughts and
actions. In some respects, this fits the
traditional definitions of surrender in that I “deliver my fugitive self into
the Law.”
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| Abstract Painting, "We Are Everywhere", (c) 2010, SZing. All rights reserved. |
To surrender is to relinquish monkey
mind busy-ness, planning and thoughts of “how things should be”, allowing
things to be as they are. Surrender is the release of Spirit that brings freedom,
confidence, peace, abundance, health, faith and more of life. To surrender is critical to faith and manifestation. All situations, events, activities, thoughts
and processes have a natural path. Rather than forcing a path, Surrender allows
the existing path to be revealed.
Surrender opens a door to possibilities, imagination and exploration.
In surrendering to the process, my artwork continues to grow and ends up better than it would have had I fought my intuitive guidance and inner knowing. I trust my art...and conversely, my art trusts me.
(c) SZing, 2013. All rights reserved.
