Complete Surrender

In this talk, Beau speaks on the topic of surrender. What does it truly mean to stop fighting and leave the battlefield of our human experience? Beau reads lesson 135 from 'A Course in Miracles' titled 'If I defend myself I am attacked'. This talk aims at helping people search their lives for the defensive and protective patterns of thought and behavior that he says are actually keeping us trapped on the battlefield instead of freeing us from it.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my conversation on surrender.

How do we truly surrender?

What is surrender?

What does it mean to truly leave the battlefield?

How do we leave the battlefield?

How do I truly walk off the battlefield and stop fighting?

Because isn't that what surrender is?

To take off,

To drop the sword,

To take off the armor,

And leave the battlefield entirely.

I am very aware in my own life and for the guidance of others that I've received that learning this is a learning.

To surrender is a practice.

Because if we do something that terrifies us,

Well,

Spirit is gentle,

Spirit is loving.

The divine teaches through love because the divine's quality is unconditional love.

It's an illusion that we think the divine that is an unconditional love would then use its very opposite to teach.

The sad thing that we have a hard time realizing is that we are the ones with our own minds that project pain onto the battlefield to so-called learn from.

We experience it as pain with our resistance.

Spirit would teach us through joy.

Spirit would say,

My sweet child,

There's no one on the battlefield.

You're dreaming terror.

But that how we learn to stop seeing terror is we stop fighting.

See this is the trick.

I don't realize that all the things I do in my day-to-day life that I do from a place of fear,

A place from defense,

A place from protecting myself,

Actually perpetuates the same pattern and experience over and over.

Maybe it shows up in a different form.

Why do I always have the same experience in relationships?

I hear that a lot.

I always seem to attract a similar experience because I don't realize that the foundation that I have set up was from a place of protecting myself,

Defending myself,

Or from fear.

And we have to ask ourself,

What am I defending myself from?

What am I defending myself from?

Defenses are designed to defend against.

See but the ego would have us convinced that we're defending ourselves from someone or something out there in the physical world,

In the material world.

But while it engages me in defending something on the battlefield,

In the world,

Then it's protecting me from losing this identity.

This identity that's grounded in defending against you,

Against it,

Against pain,

Against sickness,

Against disease,

Against losing all my money,

Against you judging me.

But while I'm in defense,

What I'm truly defending,

The ego wants me to defend outside so that I won't awaken inside.

See the very cycle of all these defenses and judgments and attacks and habits of behavior set up from fear,

They defend and protect from the divine truth of who we are.

This is the ego ploy,

The insanity.

Keep me busy with all these outside planning strategies,

Judgments,

Defenses,

And protective behaviors.

And I think that they're keeping me safe,

But they're further binding me onto the battlefield.

And when I am on the battlefield,

That is in of itself the biggest and final defense,

The battlefield itself.

So when I say leaving the battlefield,

Right,

Taking off all the armor,

Eventually leave the battlefield so that I can awaken into the divinity.

And by taking off the armor,

I unconsciously share in that innocence,

In that recognition that we share it.

So the very thing I've been protecting against,

Right,

So the other people on the battlefield all of a sudden realize,

Oh wait,

I can stop and take off my armor too.

I can put down the sword as well.

So we do it together,

But it starts with one mind at a time,

With another mind,

And then those two minds,

They have the domino effect to two other minds.

So how we wake up to who we are is by removing the defenses and the protective patterns and the beliefs that those patterns and behaviors stem from in our mind.

And I'm aware it is a gentle process.

No one's being asked.

I'm not suggesting anybody take off all the armor at once and run off the battlefield.

It's a gentle process.

We learn to look inward.

We do still have boundaries,

Right?

We do still,

You know,

There are,

We protect ourselves less and less as we join with the one mind that knows we are unassailable in truth.

That we,

Who we truly are is an unassailable,

All powerful,

All loving,

Pure essence,

Innocent,

One with this divine mind.

That that is who we truly are.

And I stop fighting by recognizing and accepting and joining with that truth as the only choice I truly want to make.

But it's a choice I make in myself with spirit,

With the help of others.

So I'm going to read a section from A Course in Miracles.

Most of you know,

Again,

That where I teach from is the metaphysical spiritual text,

A Course in Miracles,

Where most of my talks I offer from come from that foundation.

But I've,

This is a really powerful section.

It's called,

If I Defend Myself,

I Am Attacked.

If I defend myself,

I am attacked.

And all I ask you to do is have an open mind.

To me,

That is the quality of how I learn.

And so I always do kind of an invitation to the divine or spirit.

Spirit,

Help me listen for the similarities or the truth.

Help me to listen for the similarities or the truth.

And if it resonates,

Beautiful.

All right,

So here we go.

If I defend myself,

I am attacked.

Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked?

That attack was real and that his own defense could save him or herself.

And again,

Attack,

Judgment,

Protection,

Any form of outward is really,

You know,

Judging someone,

Attacking,

Defending.

Defense is a form of attack because it engages with the opposite.

So it really binds itself to the opposite.

And herein lies the folly of defense.

It gives illusions full reality and then attempts to handle them as real.

It adds illusions to illusions,

Thus making correction doubly difficult.

Correction is healing our mind,

The only place that healing can really occur.

And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future,

Activate the past,

Or organize the present as you wish.

You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you.

A sense of threat is an acknowledgement of an inherent weakness,

A belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense.

The world is based on this insane belief and all its structures,

All its thoughts and doubts,

Its penalties and heavy armaments,

The things we build to defend ourselves against,

Its legal definitions and its codes,

Its ethics and its leaders and its God's.

All serve but to preserve its sense of threat.

For no one walks the world in defense but must have terror striking at their heart.

Defense is frightening.

It stems from fear,

Increasing fear as each defense is made.

You think it offers safety,

Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified.

Is it not strange?

Do you not pause to ask as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight what you defend and how and against what?

Let us consider first what you defend.

It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted.

It must be something made easy prey,

Unable to protect itself and needing your defense.

What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful,

Deep concern are needful to protect its little life.

What but the body falters and must fail to serve the son and daughter of the divine as worthy host.

Yet it is not the body that can fear nor be a little thing to fear.

It has no needs but those which you assign to it and we assign from the mind.

It needs no complicated structures of defense,

No health-inducing medicine,

No care and no concern at all.

Defend its life or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe and you but say your home is open to the thief of time,

Corruptible and crumbling,

So unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

Now really quick I have a little note here when I read this like how do you release yourself from such a fortified prison,

Meaning the prison of our belief.

How do you say what are you telling me I shouldn't live in a home?

And no that's not what this is saying,

It's saying that when I identify as who I am,

As my identity,

As my bodily individual human identity is who I am.

You cannot serve two masters so we either serve truth or falsehood.

We don't serve truth and falsehood in one moment.

So I'm either activated in the true divine whole oneself I am beyond corruption,

Beyond time,

Beyond space or I'm the individual separate fragmented in a body me and that that body is my identity.

And so when I'm believing in that I make a lot of my day-to-day choices really from fear and defense and protection.

And so it's where I'm making these from.

So I just want you to be clear again that be gentle with what the information is that's being given now.

This is at the ultimate release when I fully joined with the truth of who I am.

But it takes as I said earlier baby steps,

Baby steps,

Baby steps.

Back to the reading.

Is not this picture fearful?

Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home?

Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus accept your own belief?

It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water.

Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?

The body is in need of no defense.

This cannot be too often emphasized.

It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill,

To purposes beyond its scope and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish.

Such attempts,

Ridiculous yet deeply cherished,

Are the sources for the many mad judgments,

Labels and outward attacks you make upon the body or inward ones.

For it seems to fail your hopes,

Your needs,

Your values and your dreams and it can be your body or the bodies on the battlefield,

The other bodies that you're looking at.

Either way these bodies fail us.

Back to the reading.

The self,

Quote like the individual self,

That needs protection is not real.

The body,

Valueless and hardly worth the least defense,

Need merely be perceived as quite apart from you and it becomes a healthy serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over.

Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind.

For you have seen in it the faults,

The weaknesses,

The limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved.

You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions and you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile and apart from other minds and separate from its true divine source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing and the body will respond with health and wholeness and completion when they have been corrected and replaced with truth.

The mind is where we heal.

The mind is what needs true defense,

The spiritual defense,

Which we learn through practice and meditation and contemplation and bringing the darkness to the light and the shadows and the fear.

This is the body's only real defense.

Yet is this where you look for its defense?

You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all,

But merely adds to your distress of mind.

You do not heal,

But merely take away the hope of healing.

For you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

A healed mind does not plan.

It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own.

It waits until it has been taught what should be done and then proceeds to do it.

It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it.

It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan.

Although it cannot know the outcome that is best,

The means by which it is achieved,

Or how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve.

It must misuse the body and its plans until it recognizes this is so.

See there's the gentleness.

We're going to continue to be human on this path.

It must misuse the body,

Meaning the mind.

The mind must misuse the body and its plans until it recognizes this is so.

But when it has accepted this is true,

Then is it healed and lets the body go.

Like the Buddha,

Like Jesus,

Like the Masters,

Once the instrument has been used for its purpose of its plan in serving our brothers and sisters in awakening its part in the plan,

It's simply the mind lets the body go.

Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body unwell.

It is not free to be a means of helping and a plan which far exceeds its own protection and which needs its service for a little while.

And this capacity is health assured,

For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

It is perhaps not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses with the purpose all of them were made to realize.

They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth.

This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take,

For the denial of reality is very obvious.

Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings.

It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions.

Time becomes a future emphasis to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs.

This overlooks the present,

For it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

And here we go,

Individual me,

The one that thinks it's acting in alignment with spirit but it's really acting from this controlled,

Safe,

Learned experience that is mine,

My individual belief system,

My past learning,

And I can rely on it,

Me.

This overlooks the present,

For it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course,

The ego mind.

The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change.

If I already know where I'm going,

I'm not going to be open to being filled with a new direction.

The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change.

What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals.

Its past experience directs its choice for what will happen,

And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past,

Without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs.

Education plays no part at all,

And present confidence directs the way.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth.

Their aim is to select what you approve and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality.

Yet what remains is meaningless indeed.

For it is your reality which is the threat that your defenses would attack,

Obscure,

And take apart,

And ultimately crucify.

And this is what I talked about earlier before we started the reading.

Ultimately the defenses,

The whole purpose of these outer distractions,

Constant defenses and protections against,

Are really defending the truth at all costs.

What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens,

All events past,

Present and to come,

Are gently planned by one whose only purpose is your good?

Perhaps you have misunderstood the Divine's plan.

For the Divine would never offer pain to you.

But your defenses did not let you see this loving blessing shine in every step you ever took.

While you made plans for death and destruction,

The Divine Light led you gently to eternal life.

Your Spirit,

Right?

The Divine Light is your Spirit,

The Christ,

The Buddha,

Your Spirit guides.

They are leading you gently to eternal life.

Your present trust in the Divine is the defense which promises a future undisturbed without a trace of sorrow and with joy which constantly increases as the life becomes a holy instant,

A divine instant set in time but heeding only immortality.

Let no defense but your present trust direct the future.

So the only defense we truly need is a present trust in our Spirit guiding us home.

And this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

Without defenses,

You become a light which heaven and the divine realm gratefully acknowledges to be its own.

And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan begun when time was born.

Your followers,

Your brothers,

Your sisters will join their light with yours and it will be increased until the world is lit up with joy.

And gladly will your brothers and sisters lay aside their cumbersome defenses which availed them nothing and could only terrify.

We will anticipate that time today with present confidence.

For this is part of what is planned for us.

We can be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment in this today.

We make no plans for how it will be done but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

So as I remove armor one piece at a time,

This paves the way for the ultimate truth we all share in mind and spirit to be restored.

Anybody that wants to actually Google the Course in Miracles Lesson 135,

There's more that's left in that lesson but then it becomes more about the actual meditation,

About how to practice being defenseless in your day,

To taking off the armor through meditation and inner inquiry,

Learning how to connect to the source of light,

The source of love,

The source of who we are,

That we are held in spirit,

That this seeming dream of separation and individuality,

That we are held in the container by the divine spirit that is with us at all times and that its spirit,

The spirit of the awakened self,

Some call it the Buddha self,

The Christ self,

The awakened mind.

And since mind is one,

If one has awakened we have all already awakened.

But to truly join in this awakening calls me to relinquish the attachments,

The defenses,

The judgments,

The protections.

And how we do that is we look at our day-to-day life and all of our behaviors and motivations and where are they stemming from.

And it can be frightening so we do this gently and with spirit's help,

With people we trust to help us,

Accountability partners,

Spirit guides along the way.

They help us,

They join us on the battlefield that we've been on so long.

And we take the armor off and we leave the battlefield.

And we're able to do that by first of all taking all of these people from our past,

All of these family members,

All of these relationships,

All of these people in the world that we've put on the battlefield in front of us,

All these ailments and pains.

We see them on the battlefield and as long as we aren't willing to release them with the help of spirit,

To release the belief which is in our mind where a belief exists,

Release them.

Because once we release the belief in our mind then we see,

Oh we can take the armor off because there is nothing to defend ourself from.

But we do it slowly.

We will still see them on the field for a while.

So we will still be taking some things,

But where do we do it from?

We do it from the place of,

Ah ha ha,

But I've been shown the truth and now I'm asking spirit to help me apply this truth,

To truly incorporate this truth into my cells,

Into my mind so that with confidence and safety that is eternal I can finally leave the battlefield.

So this has been my talk on letting go of these defenses.

Join with spirit.

Join with your team of people and excavate,

Learn,

Do some writing.

Ask yourself,

Where am I defending?

Where am I protecting?

Can I see that what I defend and protect these very behaviors just perpetuate more?

Where can I start to practice with spirit,

With the help of others,

Gently taking off these pieces of the armor?

And first it just starts with inquiry.

The meditation or the prayer or the invitation,

Spirit,

Divine,

Help heal my mind.

Heal my mind of the illusions that keep me stuck in a pattern of defending and protecting.

Help me to join in the unassailable light,

Love,

And truth that you are,

That we are.

Help me to move out into the world as a light,

Teaching what the masters in the past taught,

That death is an illusion,

That fear is an illusion.

I learn this by looking,

But I start to look with you so that I can release.

So I hope you guys enjoyed this talk.

Feel free to comment your thoughts.

You can message me through the app,

And I look forward to joining with you again sometime soon.

My live offerings will be beginning sometime shortly.

Stay tuned.

Reviews

Thank you Beau. 🙏❤️

The Concept Of Fear As and Illusion and Taking Away Our Armor are great teachings! Thanks for your wisdom .

Lot to unpack. Yet drop the defense and surrender. Great articulation

Just what I needed to hear today. Lately, I have been working on extinguishing some of my old behaviours that my mind developed to distract me from experiencing anxiety and sadness over the years.

Literal mind blowing! Thank you! Many repeat listens are before me!