“A disciple said to him, “I am ready, in the quest for God, to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?” The Master calmly replied, “One’s beliefs about God.”
- Anthony de Mello (1931-1987), Catholic theologian & spiritual teacher
We’ve cultivated our beliefs about God over years, lifetimes, centuries, and millennia. We’re certain that our human intellect, through dedicated study, has enabled us to accumulate a vast wealth of knowledge about our Creator. Our religions are built on the very concept of carrying on the torch of God-knowledge to subsequent generations. So the question is… why on earth would we want to, or be willing to, surrender our beliefs about God?
For some, such a suggestion might seem like sheer nonsense; for others, too fearful to fathom; and still for others, utter blasphemy to even entertain the thought. Our answer, though, is not concerned with what makes sense to the human intellect. Nor is it concerned with mankind’s ancient belief in the ‘fear’ or retribution of a punishing God, or with religious doctrine of any kind. Our answer is one of spiritual experience, which leads us far beyond the limits of our human fears and intellectual pride. Our answer is simply this: to surrender our beliefs of God, to God, is one of the greatest acts of faith, humility and devotion that we can demonstrate in life. As the disciple above is guided to learn, surrendering our beliefs far exceeds any physical act of giving up material possessions, because the concept of ‘sacrificing something to God’ is utterly meaningless.
What faith, what courage, what fearless, unconditional love it demonstrates to humbly express to God, regardless of where we are at in our understanding, “I surrender to You this moment every belief I ever held of You, and wholly open my mind for You to teach me about You from now on.” We don’t need to look hard in this agreement to see a deep acknowledgment and vow of love and unity between Creation and Creator. It is from this very place of unity we were taught that “everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
This expression is not something we do only once ceremoniously or think about only on Sabbath or Sundays – it’s something we practice, and practice, and practice again until we come to know the experience that everyone and everything can be perceived as an extension of God. As such, our perspective of the world becomes ”unchangingly new”. From such an experience we can look back in hindsight and see that it had been our attachments to past beliefs that limited what we were able to experience in our “quest for God”.
Imagine how our human relationships could benefit from continually seeing each other with this fresh perspective rather than through a lens of ’good or bad’ based on judgments and beliefs formed by past experience.
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If you want to read more from Anthony de Mello, I highly recommend a great, easy read of his titled Awareness.
Also if you’d like to read more on the topic of surrendering beliefs, here is an earlier post you might find useful: Wanted: Peace of Mind, No Worries and Freedom from Worldly Woes
Absolutely right on the button…your post facilitated another, deeply felt shift in me, and I’ll be practising more and more with this. Thank you, more than I have words for (and even writing this, my awareness suddenly caught sight of how there really is only the One of us.
I first came across Anthony de Mello’s work eighteen years ago, and although I felt very drawn to it, I didn’t understand it. Since I came to the awakening path proper, de Mello’s work is suddenly making sense. I have several of his books, but have also just seen there’s quite a lot of his public talks available on YouTube. Thanks Patrick
Love to you.