After what's been posted recently on difficult kundalini passages and the nature of love, I thought this topic might belong here, especially since there is some agreement that a devotional context is essential in dealing safely and sanely with strong energy upheavals. What I had in mind initially was either a sharing of experiences and views on surrender to God, and/or related aspects of spiritual life and development that seem to facilitate surrender. It is my experience that I can only partially surrender to God, and that it often takes a degree of pain I can't assuage to bring me to a point of relenting and allowing grace to create new openings. Of course,there is much to be said here about the nature of the will from theological and mystical perspectives as well.

This topic came up for me today while noticing the effects of petitionary prayer. It seems this aspect of prayer is mainly taken up during the Eucharist. I've seldom heard it recommended as a central feature of personal devotion. So I'll share the journal notes I took, as there is something happening for me that has a healing effect in the exercise of the will in this particular context.

Praying for others, especially one's "enemies," immediately disposes the will to grace, since this expression of awareness requires some opening beyond self-empowerment. Moreover, the presence of this grace, willed for the benefit of others who have hurt us, and who suffer also, creates an increased acceptance and understanding of those parts of our psyches which carry the pain itself. And so forgiveness, as one aspect of surrender, isn't a strong-willed attempt to overcome resentments, but acceptance of the pains that bind us to our perpetrators with equal need of grace and healing.

To have even a small, momentary sense of this will to love, capable of wishing happiness for one who took ours, is touching the heart of Christ. When this love begins to open in us, we realize it naturally includes ourselves and the other. There may be a large component of resistance to forgiveness that is mainly about the fear of willing/giving what we never received, especially to those who were supposed to give us essential love during early development. What I'm discovering is that the heart of Christ hidden in the human experience is immediately kindled when our wills are merely disposed to this simple act of kind regard. Just by wishing for the basic well-being of people, not necessarily the most henious in our memories at first, but those we share conflict with, the heart of Christ is awakened in ours (or better, ours in His), and a spring of nourishment is tapped. This act of the will in prayer for others has nothing to do, it seems, with actual reconciliation, at least in the conventional sense, although the interior healing/increased nourishment might just make this possible, even though it would then become an inside-outside expression rather than the colossal therapeutic maneuver that often backfires.

Facing the limits of the will is like Jacob wrestling with the angel, a powerful metaphor for struggle with pain, and how it ripens us to further openings in the will to God (Who knows, we're probably wrestling with angels much of the time without knowing it). God doesn't waive this struggle from our experience, but allows entry into the crucifixion as a means for grace given in no other way. When we've surrendered all we can, there still remains a relentless longing bigger than any of the pains thwarting our growth in Divine intimacy. This longing springs from our being made in the image of Christ before time, from adoration within the Godhead. Eventually, resisting the true nature of the longing becomes more painful than any other pain, and a new tender place of surrender is made.

The relative ease with which the basic sense of forgiveness comes during petitionary prayer suggests that the love partaken in the will through grace has a "for giving" nature, an expression of the Godhead wherein no creature can possibly be excluded. I don't mean to say that I'm free of resentments, or that pain is magically absolved, but that the relationship to that pain is somewhat shifted or broadened through an awareness of the inclusive nature of Divine love; this love is not completely transcendental, but part of the longing of the soul to find expressions within the nervous system that accomodate its purpose.

The simple manner of this prayer is something like:

"Jesus, may _______ be given your peace."
know your love."
sense her own goodness."

Of course, an individual, intuitive approach seems to occur just out of the sincerity of doing this. But even without strong affective mood, the simple intention evokes the process.

What I'm discovering is that the heart of Christ hidden in the human experience is immediately kindled when our wills are merely disposed to this simple act of kind regard. Just by wishing for the basic well-being of people, not necessarily the most henious in our memories at first, but those we share conflict with, the heart of Christ is awakened in ours (or better, ours in His), and a spring of nourishment is tapped.

I just really wanted to call attention to this from your opening post, w.c. You are articulating a key dynamic in the simple spirituality of "being here now in love."

And I very much agree that there are implications here for the integration of energy and the healing of brokenness.