RockOm

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Why is it that it most always takes a major crisis in our lives to bring about the wisdom and ultimate peace found in the act of surrendering? We come to find ourselves completely and utterly broken; a brokenness that forces us to our knees with a subsequent surrender to a higher power has precious, life changing lessons for us but only when we can learn to say "yes" to all things that come into our lives.

Deepak Chopra says of surrender, 

"The highest aim of any spiritual path is surrender. Although you may associate the word surrender with defeat or weakness, it is the most powerful spiritual action, offering you infinite freedom and possibilities. Surrender is trusting that God, the Universe, or a higher intelligence can accomplish anything, even when you can’t foresee the outcome of a situation.

"At the level of spirit, everything is always unfolding perfectly, and you don’t have to struggle or force situations to go your way. It is only your ego-mind that believes you are an isolated individual trying to survive in a hostile world. In truth, you are a spiritual being. By surrendering to Spirit, you end the struggle, freeing yourself from fear and doubt and releasing the obstacles your ego has created."

True surrender is being grateful for and learning to express heartfelt gratitude for whatever is currently going on in our lives, regardless of our current perception of what those events, conditions, and circumstances that we are experiencing may consist of.

Once we are able to effectively initiate this gratitude, we will find that those events, conditions, and circumstances that may appear to be unpleasant or working against our desired outcomes will, with almost magical certainty, cease to exist. We'll then begin to be able to see them change and begin turning into events, conditions, and circumstances that clearly are bringing us closer to our desired outcomes. Here are some songs that can help us open to the idea of surrender with new eyes, ears and hearts.

SONG: “Living Prayer” by Alison Krauss (listen)

EXCERPT: “In your love I find release/A haven from my unbelief/Take my life and let me be/A living prayer, my God to Thee.”

REFLECTION: The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians, “Lord, I believe. Help me with my disbelief.” Alison Krauss comes in a close second here evoking the same message as she relays that in God’s love we can find a “peace that passes all understanding” if we surrender our beliefs and life to a higher power. Surrendering does not mean we lose anything, it means we can let our lives, through surrender  be “living prayers” to God and all beings.

SONG: “Bad” by U2 (listen)

EXCERPT: “This desperation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation/Let it go/And so fade away…/Surrender.”

REFLECTION: Bono’s vague lyrics here are open to interpretation but are reportedly about a friend's heroin addiction. We can use these words to remind us whatever we are experiencing that is undesirable can be let go of, that we can let our experience, our story pass into the presence of that which accepts all our faults without judgment. In this song Bono's voice  soars into the realms of both pain and exasperation, as well as velvety consolation in an effort to convey the experience of moving aside and letting all things “fade away.”

SONG: “Mind Games” by John Lennon (listen)

EXCERPT: “Yes is the answer/And you know that for sure/Yes is surrender/You got to let it, you got to let it go.”

REFLECTION: John Lennon was inspired to write "Mind Games" from a book authored by Robert Masters and Jean Houston which accentuated the force of the human brain to induce various states of consciousness. The song's positive message reminds us that saying "yes" IS the key to surrender and allowing for answers to come. By expressing "yes" we move into a higher state of being and from this openness, a space for peace and healing expands and possibilities are endless.

YOUR TURN: What songs speak to you about surrendering and letting go of preconceived outcomes allowing for new possibilities and insight?

By Forrest Dailey for Musicgoat.com

Regarding why the Beatles broke up, for years, I was a member of the “Yoko Is Evil” sect. Then for a while I converted to Paul-is-an-Egomaniac-ism. I took it for granted that the truth lay somewhere within these two camps. Eventually I realized the many other factors: John Lennon’s addiction to heroin; the death of the Beatles manager Brian Epstein; their music and individual talents getting too big to be contained within one album; George Harrison’s waning interest in traditional western pop music.

Part of the reason for Harrison’s change of direction was his growing passion for Indian music, philosophy and eventually religion. Recently I have myself become immersed in a faith which relies heavily on the Hindu worldview regarding reincarnation, karma, “Hell” as distance from God rather than a literal lake of fire. I feel my years of Beatles fandom was just a way to get me across that spiritual bridge.

Whenever I meditate on a worldly desire and make a vow to do, or not do any given thing, if I later fall back on that vow, I find that I do face consequences of my action. It’s Karma, its Natural Law, the Law of Truth, whatever you want to call it. A dharma (religious duty) of Hinduism, Christianity and all major religions really is “Do not bear false witness” with an implied “or else…” involved. Mohandas Gandhi wrote of this concept in depth in his “Autobiography.”

In 1967, the rest of the Beatles willingly accompanied Harrison to Wales for a weekend seminar on Transcendental Meditation, and to India the following spring for an extended course. Though the course did not make religious faith a priority, there is always an aspect of spirituality with meditation, and where there is spirituality, there is a connection with God on one level or another. Whether one accepts it or not, that door is opened at that time. The importance of the Law of Truth is, hence, heightened.

Before the Wales seminar, the Beatles were on top of the world having just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the single “All You Need Is Love” that summer. They were the voice of the youth movement. What happened?

Two of the Beatles’ best-known songs are “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “All You Need Is Love”. Could the Beatles have written, recorded and performed these songs for profit, all the while living the lavish and, lets face it, decadent lifestyles they did without Karma rearing its ugly head?

While they were at the Wales seminar, their manager died. But things still seemed good six months later when they left for India. While in India, John Lennon flirted with the idea that their next move as a band should be to become “spiritual leaders.” For the course, they were to give up all non-prescription drugs for mental clarity. But none of them gave up smoking pot and once they got back from India John went back to LSD and soon started using heroin. Even George never gave up his rock star lifestyle while scolding other rich people in a song called “Piggies.”

Even though they wrote about 40 songs in India the following spring and seemed to be very together, as soon as they got back from India, everything seemed to fall apart rapidly. From the beginning of the White Album sessions in May 1968 there were bitter arguments. This was followed by Yoko entering the picture, a bitter struggle for power in the band, and a very bitter court battle which eventually tore the band asunder.

Was Yoko’s presence a catalyst to bring on the negative Karma the Beatles collected through their non-adherence to the law of Truth? What about the death of Brian Epstein? Another example of Karmic retribution on the band? Surely not as their Karma should not have dragged Brian and his very life into it. It may have been Karma from past incarnations that caused them to have to go through such a tragedy together, but that is a different story. The disaster of Apple Corps., and the resulting lawsuits over money which ended the Beatles, however, seem like fitting Karmic retribution for years of singing about love being more important than money, all the while making money and lifestyle the most important thing in reality. And Lennon must have known it, as one of his first solo singles was “Instant Karma, where he sang “Instant Karma’s gonna get you” and “we all shine on”, meaning “we all have to live with the consequences of our actions, so be careful.” Indeed, his band had fallen mightily from grace.

Forrest Dailey is the author of treadmarkz.wordpress.com

Last month, we shared three posts from RockOm staffer Jon Z. - each a meditation on John Lennon's imagine. Today we complete that series with Jon's conclusion. See also: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

No possessions. This is easier for me. For several years, I considered joining a Catholic religious order. I looked forward to the prospect of making lifelong vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. (Well, poverty and chastity, at least! Obedience? Say what?) The modern life of monks and nuns in religious orders isn’t completely free of possessions, but it comes close. It’s definitely a refutation of consumerism and greed. The Paulist Fathers more accurately call it a promise of Gospel simplicity rather than “poverty.”

After much “discernment” (the work that both the inquirer and the order do to find God’s will in the matter), it became clear to me that my mission is to live in the world, with all of its challenges, not in a monastery or friary designed to help me cultivate my interior spiritual life.

Well, the fact is I’m not a monk, and I no longer seek to have no possessions. In fact, I’m looking forward to upgrading the RAM in my PC and probably replacing my ailing DVD player. But I try to live relatively simply. I am very conscious of greed in our society, and its effect upon the soul and upon the world. “Freedom from want” is nigh impossible when nearly every marketing dollar goes is spent to increase wanting. And meanwhile, often because the very definition of the consumer society is that it can never have enough, the other kind of wanting—lack, deprivation, hunger ensues.

Idealistic top-down efforts have tried and failed to change this. Communism was a spectacular failure of idealism, which created horrific suffering for the world. What I can do, is work on the bottom-up approach. I can control my wanting. If I destroy the wanting engine within myself, someone else can have more. Imagine if more of us did the same, we would be doing the one of most revolutionary things possible.

Imagine!

[By Jon Zuck. Jon blogs at www.frimmin.com and is the Senior Web Manager on staff at RockOm.net. The original post is here.]

See Part 1 here , Part 2 here .

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

“And no religion too” has a been a difficult part of the song for me until recently. One of the key points is understanding what is meant by “religion.”

It’s often pointed out that “religion” comes from the Latin for “to bind again.” In a positive sense, this is repair , binding us together again, making us whole, building community, creating moral underpinnings, providing purpose and hope, establishing a base upon which to reach out to others, and at its very best, providing an entrance through which one can experience the numinous.

In a negative sense, though, binding is bondage, creating vast arrays of mental garbage that prevents many from discovering God, themselves, and full human life. It also implies separation.

Imagine (no pun intended) a stick bound in a bundle with other sticks. They become a group, a unit. Yet, in being bound together, they are also bound away from everything else. A single stick loses its fractured “identity” as a simple stick, and becomes a part of something larger than its small broken self, yet smaller that the whole it is inherently part of (all the wood on Earth).

This, in miniature, reflects the deficiency of “identity” given by the rebinding of religion. It’s excellent as far as lifting the individual to the next higher step, yet the very bonds that lifted him up to that point might inhibit him from being able to reach the next step beyond that. If so, he may identify with the religion, and create an identity from it. Our religious identities are as flimsy as our national identities, though they seem not to be at first. After all, I can have an experience of God, but does anyone have an experience of “country?” I don’t think so.

At times in my life, I have imagined (pun intended) that I was a Baptist, a Methodist, a Charismatic, a Lutheran, a Messianic gentile, a member of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, or a Catholic. Since my first experience of Christ, I’ve imagined I was “a Christian.” Yet Jesus only asked people to follow him, not to “become Christians!”

The truth is I am a human being, and as far as I can tell, even that apparent condition is only in effect until I die. I am spirit, or consciousness, or life. In Judeo-Christian terms, I’m made in “the image of God,” imago Dei. Other religions have other terms. Whatever it’s called (and it’s important to not attach to any particular language), that is the only thing that is unchangeable.

Yet the identification with a religion has nothing to do with the knowledge of God. The former gives the language and interpretation, the mental filling, that comes before and after those sacred moments of knowing. And the labels are purely products of the mind. No doctor has ever identified a Muslim headache or a Catholic T-cell. The Baptist gene remains stubbornly beyond discovery, and the Daoist dermis seems to be a myth! Yet there’s no shortage of people to tell you that you “are” Shi’a or Anglican or Jodo Shin Buddhist, or whatever.

Imagine there’s no religion…

Since the experience I had in [in the past], I can. It’s much simpler than religion. Simpler than any concept of God or nirvana. Simpler than a single word It’s just:

.

[By Jon Zuck. Jon blogs at www.frimmin.com and is the Senior Web Manager on staff at RockOm.net. The original post is here.]

See the first post in this series (Meditation on Imagine, Part 1) here .

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

This part screams to me. "Imagine there's no countries / It is isn't hard to do…" To which my first response is "Duh! How can anyone believe countries exist?" Not only do I find it "not hard" to "imagine there's no countries," but it seems a simple, obvious fact that there are none.

However, looking back, it wasn't always obvious to me… it was a revelation that came to me over a period of reflection. I think I was in high school, and I was thinking about phrases I would hear in the news… "Russia said," "China announced," "Washington replied," "Israel demanded," etc.

I realized that statements like these were simply shorthand for quickly describing something far more complex: "Russia" hadn't said anything… A statement was issued with the authority of the Soviet government declaring something. And that statement probably had probably gone through some quick drafts and discussion among General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and his advisers, clarifying shades and nuances of what precisely was meant, what should be said, and why. In short, a small group of people, strongly influenced by a single individual, in essence different from no other persons on the globe, had made a statement.

Now this statement had some weight in the world, because the individuals who issued it were presumed to have "power" over a "country." I realized that "power" itself was another slippery fiction. Again, it was a shorthand for the notion that a person had the means to effect what he or she desired to do, in spite of opposition. In the Soviet Union, the "power" of the individuals making a statement, was considered close to total… that if anyone resisted their effort, say they tried to turn off the microphone or take the statement out of the speaker's hand, they would be immediately arrested and certainly face dire consequences.

Yet the only way they could be arrested was for other individuals chose to act in accord with his orders, thus granting him "power." If no one—no soldiers, no police, no judges, no comrades—would cooperate, he would have no "power."

Ditto, then, for all the supposed countries making statements. All that was really happening was persons at the head of organizations with usually-respected chains of command were making statements… Countries were not talking. The country was something with no existence other than the fact that a large group of persons agreed to pretend it existed and respect the established chains of command.

Could a mass of people destroy a country by simply no longer agreeing to pretend it existed? That was a question on many minds in 1991. For over a year, persons in Vilnius, Lithuania had declared that "the Soviet Union" did not exist in the area called Lithuania, that Lithuania was "independent." Yet most people inside and outside the Soviet Union kept agreeing to pretend that it did.

Their willingness to do so collapsed following the kidnapping of President Gorbachev in August that year. Suddenly "the Soviet Union" seemed a flimsy and undesirable fiction to hold on to. Others were proposed and found more appealing: Russian Federation, Ukraine, Commonwealth of Independent States, etc. On Christmas Day, 1991, the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Kremlin forever, no longer a symbol of "rule" but a piece of cloth evoking the past. Influential persons living in the landmass that had been called the Soviet Union had agreed to stop pretending it existed, and it was gone.

That is the extent of reality a country has. That is why you were taught to believe your country (no matter what it is), is real, and that your country (no matter what it is), is "good."

At this time, Southwest Asia, from Afghanistan in the East, to Iraq in the center, and Lebanon and Israel in the West, is engaged in varying levels of warfare, with Syria and Iran participating behind-the-scenes.

But imagine there's no countries… only people. No past to avenge. No future to fight for. No cause to enlist into a militia or terrorist group for. Nothing to kill or die for. Only men and women, boys and girls, all alike in having the same human needs, fears, aspirations.

That's the way I see it now. What will it take for others there to imagine it too?

[By Jon Zuck. Jon blogs at www.frimmin.com and is the Senior Web Manager on staff at RockOm.net.]

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

I used to have a love/hate relationship with this song. On one hand, I lauded Lennon’s idealism and desire for peace, but on the other, his antipathy to religion was quite off-putting to me until fairly recently.

Some years ago, I did come to imagine “no hell below us,” though. And that willingness to *imagine* and consider, eventually became a willingness to “re-examine the hell idea” in depth. I’m happy to report it didn’t survive the scrutiny!

Reexamining “good” and “evil” seems to be going around lately in my local blogosphere. A large number of people, however, are not yet able to earnestly question what they’ve been taught about “good” and “evil.” That in itself isn’t a problem. But those unquestioned presuppositions can become the source of great suffering. Large parts of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish world are engaged in open warfare at the time of this post. It’s fair to say that every entity involved in the fighting views itself as “good,” and their enemy as “evil.”

Lennon urges us to look at ordinary life, rather than philosophy or religion, for the direction on how to live. Ironically, this echoes the idea present throughout all the mystics that ethics is as simple as the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love your neighbor.

Is this raw atheism? Is there really “only sky” above us? Does “living for today” mean there is no afterlife? Not at all. I believe (yeah, I do have beliefs!) that there is far more to This than what is the visible world. (Really it’s far less, but I won’t get into that here!) But the thing is that we are only responsible for our interactions in this tangible world with each other, under the sky.

“Only sky” means that there is no heaven except at this moment, and no hell except at this moment, no life at all except the single moment we have to live now. The past and the future exist only in the mind. The only experience is the experience of the present moment.

And at every moment, we are constantly involved in creating heavens and hells for ourselves and each other. The eyes of the Father are not looking down upon us, so much as looking out through us… every one of us.

[By Jon Zuck. Jon blogs at www.frimmin.com and is the Senior Web Manager on staff at RockOm.net.] Originally posted to his blog on July 25, 2006.