Surrender to Love

Cell Fifty-Seven builds directly on Cell Fifty-Six: if Sacred Heart is the discovery that love is the ground of being, then Surrender to Love is the practice of actually living from that ground — releasing the habitual defences that prevent love from moving freely through you, both as you receive it and as you give it.

The Sufis called this fana — the annihilation of the ego-self in the divine. Not destruction, but the joyful yielding of the part to the whole, the wave discovering that it is the ocean. This is the ultimate form of the Surrender (Cell Thirty-Two) that appeared earlier in the journey, but now it is not surrender of a difficult situation — it is surrender of the fundamental belief in separation itself.

There is a specific fear that stands between most practitioners and this level of opening: the fear that if I love without condition, I will be hurt without limit. The ego's deep conviction is that the open heart is a vulnerable heart. And in one sense, this is precisely true. The open heart can be hurt. It is also the only heart that can fully love. These are not separate facts.

What would it mean to stop protecting your heart and simply let love be your natural state?

I yield to love completely, and in that yielding I find the greatest strength I have ever known.