Yearning for Surrender

All I wish in this life is for me to surrender to something greater. Life in clarity without some god, some higher force, devastates my fragile soul.

Oh, how simple it would be if I had some higher figure to surrender myself to. As I've written in Among Strangers, who would be more capable of holding infinite pressure than an infinite being?

Yet I peer past the trees above me, and I recognize I operate at a small scale of existence. In fidelity to truth, I can't belong to any religion, any following, any devotion to something higher beyond my scale.

I can revere the humanity within us all, though. The extraordinary hiding within the ordinary.

Everywhere.

If God does exist, and I indeed go to hell for not believing, could you please send me to the first circle of Hell? I would rather spend eternity with Plato, Marcus, and Seneca than worship a wrathful god. If God exists and has mercy for my flaws, then many thanks in advance.

Truthfully, if I had the choice between heaven and the first circle of Hell, I almost think I would pick the latter. Is there something wrong with me that I would prefer maintaining my own separation from the divine rather than losing myself in becoming one?

Divine unity is described as something incredible, something beyond language. But what would be of me, then? I have come to appreciate the abilities of this loose collection of chance, distance, and illusion that I call "I".

Above all, in traditional religious frameworks I am but a speck on the canvas of existence. How could I claim to know the true nature of reality?

I must tend to the people I love (and, by our shared humanity, everyone) while they are still here.

Existential yearning for surrender aside, I have a duty to withhold at my own scale.

To ignore that is arrogance of the highest caliber.