Spiritual surrender can transform us. It is a powerful force. However, it is also one of the most difficult actions for us to undertake. Surrender requires that we let go of our individual agendas.

That letting go is the difficult part. Letting go is loss. When we let go of something, we allow God’s will to prevail. We willingly lose our individual expectations and attachment to a particular outcome. In vedic astrology there is even one area of the horoscope dedicated to such losses. It is the twelfth house.

Each of us has so many agendas. Call them plans. Call it karma. There are many names for those thoughts of which I speak.

A few examples might help clarify the situation.
• What are your plans? Let’s start with something simple. What are your plans for the rest of the day? Do you want to eat dinner? Do you plan to wash dishes? Do you need to put children to bed? Those are your agendas for today. How will you feel if you do not accomplish the things on your plan?
• When is the next time your family and friends will gather for a holiday dinner? What “traditions” do you celebrate around that holiday? How would you feel if the celebration changed? How would you feel if the food changed? How would you feel if a different person hosted the gathering? Those hopes, preconceived ideas, and expectations are your agendas for that event.
• Do you want to get married or enter into a romantic relationship? That is an agenda.

Basically, agendas are our plans. Perhaps it is better to define agendas as our plans plus our emotional expectations for those plans. I say this because plans can exist without emotional involvement. For example I had planned to take some clothing to the dry cleaners. The pants have been in my car for several days now. Why haven’t I dropped them off yet? My emotions have not been involved. While I would enjoy wearing the pants at work next week, I have others that I can wear.

In other words I have surrendered my desire to wear certain articles of clothing. I like the clothes and they fit well. However, it is not important to my happiness whether I wear them next week.

That was a very simple example of surrender. This is a more complex one. Imagine you are planning a holiday gathering or a party. You decorate your house in a certain way. You purchase particular foods to cook. You invite the guests. You make all the necessary preparations. Let us say you are hosting a 40th birthday party for your husband at the beach. On the day of the party the sky is cloudy and the weather forecast predicts rain in the afternoon. How do you react? Do you cancel the party? Do you proceed as planned with the party and let God determine the outcome?

When this happened during my husband’s birthday party, we continued as scheduled. The rain came, too. It rained lightly, then it poured. Everything was soaked. People rushed to cover the food, but much of it contained puddles of water. After retreating to our house, people dried themselves (and the food), put on clean clothes, and, eventually, laughed. In the end everyone felt that we had undergone a terrific bonding experience. Could anyone have predicted that outcome? Certainly not! By letting go of our expectations and allowing God to set the agenda, He gave us a more interesting party. It just wasn’t the one we planned.