I have written before on the idea of surrender and how difficult that word is for me. Surrender feels like giving up, almost like annihilation. To me it has meant being conquered by that grandfather sky god. To my ego, it feels like the end of existence.

In an earlier blog I played with the words, allowing and inviting. What if I allow or invite God/dess in rather than surrendering. Those terms felt better to me, but there was a missing element that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I have had some conversations lately with a brilliant evolutionary astrologist, Marion Loguidice. She has helped me see surrender in a totally different light (thank you, Marion). In a meditation after a conversation with her, I saw myself merging into myself. My ego-self merged with my true self, my Soul. I was not capitulating to something outside of myself, but rather I was merging into what I was born to be. It was a voluntary act of loving myself enough to become myself. It was inviting and allowing my human self and my divine self to merge into one. It was letting go of trying to be perfect and loving myself, just as I am, warts and all.

For so many years, I have fought the idea of surrendering myself to something outside of myself. It feels that if I surrender, I will no longer exist. However, if I surrender to my true self, if I merge with my Soul, the opposite is true. In that case, I become more of myself. Instead of disappearing, I become larger, more expansive, more truly me. In merging with my Soul, I become more of who I came to earth to be. I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to be myself. I can be wild and crazy, quiet and shy, or bold and assertive, depending on what is called for at the moment. I can stand in my truth without shame or fear. I can offer my gifts to the world in love and humility without needing the approval of anyone else. I can be who I am in the depths of my being.

This merging of ego with Soul is not a one and done act. It is a process that requires consciously allowing and inviting myself to merge with Myself every single day. It is a process that requires me to say no to the voices in my head that tell me I am not enough, that I must be quiet, or that I must be perfect. It is a process that requires me to remember that I am my Soul, not this body or this ego. It is one of the lessons that I must learn in this lifetime. No matter what else I do, I must merge with my Soul to become what I truly am.  

Barbara Garland
August, 2022