"I am afraid of surrendering, I am afraid to open myself."
When you are real, the fear is natural. All fear comes from not knowing yourself, from not knowing who you are. Usually, nobody looks at this - you live such protected lives, you hardly need any courage. Only when you get sick, when someone close to you dies, when you have an accident, or when you meet a mystic. only when something shakes you up, those hidden things come up - and you need courage. So it is natural to be afraid of surrendering. But don't even think of surrender. First be available for love, first make space for love. That is the homework.
Love is in you. You are love. God is love. You are God. But this doesn't help you - because you don't know it, you haven't realized it.
And this is my challenge to you: that you start looking at yourself, that you meet your fears - that you go into the unknown to start knowing yourself - knowing how you function. You have to meet yourself; surrender comes later. When there is love, surrender comes like a shadow. The blossoming of love is surrender. If there is no love, how can you trust? You are still in confusion. To go into love, you have to lose control, and that's what you are afraid of. Control is mind, control is fear - let go is freedom.
This is the challenge, and you're seeing it. Most people can fool themselves their whole life, believing they know what love is, believing they know who they are. They have never looked at themselves in the mirror.
In the beginning, when you start looking at yourself, it's very uncomfortable. You are only used to your physical appearance, your face. When you start looking deeper - into the unknown, the exploration begins - the seeking, the discovery of who you are.
Think about why you are afraid to open yourself. Either you don't like what is in there - there's fear of the ghosts, the rats, the creatures that might come out - or you are afraid of the unknown. That's where the guide, the master comes in. In spite of the fear, you get the courage to look.
When you understand what the mystics are saying - that all fear is just an absence of love, an absence of true understanding, of true insight - maybe you'll have the courage to look at your fears, no matter what they are. This is very difficult to do by yourself. But when you have someone you love, someone you trust even more than yourself, maybe you'll look - in spite of yourself, in spite of the fear to open yourself.
This is the price you have to pay: if you want to find diamonds - the most precious stones - you have to start digging through the mud, the sand, the rocks, and the hard stone - deeper and deeper. You don't even know if you'll find the diamonds, but something is driving you. This is the longing the mystics talk about. Everybody knows, deep inside, that the diamonds are there. But you'll only remember that at a certain point - when it's really needed - when you are available to listen to the secret whisper.
You are so occupied with your ordinary life that you have no time to listen to this silent inner voice. You are so busy with your dramas, your education, your relationships, your families, your plans, your dreams - who has time to listen? To listen you have to be receptive. And there is no receptivity when there is fear. Intuition, receptivity are simply colors of love. So just focus on love.