How to Surrender Without Getting Sucker-Punched
What Am I Surrendering To? Life. Why? Because Giving Up the Fight Is Such a Relief!
Hello. Are you in there?
Yeah?
Who are you?
I’m Roshana. I’m not my name, not those letters.
And of course, you’re not just your name … or your body.
If you cut your hand off, you’re still you, right? You’re still there.
In fact, if they took away every limb, both kidneys, and an eyeball, you’d still be you, right? You’d still be there inside.
Your body doesn’t look the same as when you were 3 or 10 or 23. Even though you’ve changed — a lot — you’re still the one inside, the one looking out of your eyes.
So, say it with me:
“I am the subject. My body is the object.”
“There’s only one subject: me.”
Who am I?
The outside world is coming in and rendering in my brain.
Who am I who is looking at the world coming in?
I am the soul.
What’s it like in there?
Sometimes It’s OK in here, but it’s not always fun.
I’m in here. I exist. I notice my thoughts. But the thoughts are not who I am.
A life of surrender
These are the opening ideas from a course called “Living from a Place of Surrender” by Michael Singer, which I explored with some friends over the past few weeks. Singer has a couple of books on the New York Times bestseller list: “The Untethered Soul” and “The Surrender Experiment.” And he’s got a brand-new book called “Living Untethered.” Singer is also a major software entrepreneur and a yoga and meditation instructor. Interesting fellow, for sure.
Although I found his delivery a bit annoying (I listened to the audio version), I’ve been changed by the ideas he presented. Seriously changed.
I’m in here
Step 1 in this process of surrender is realizing that you’re in there. You’re the only one in there. But:
- You’re not your body.
- You’re not your emotions.
- You’re not your thoughts.
You’re the soul. You are consciousness.
You are the persistent, consistent being. The nature of your being is beautiful. Your natural energy is gorgeous and free-flowing.
The predicament
So, if your natural energy is so gorgeous and free, why is it so noisy in there?
- Well, you’ve got the world coming in.
- Your emotions rise up in relation to what’s in front of you, coming in.
- Your thoughts start yapping about the emotions arising.
Let’s look at the world: The moment in front of you has nothing to do with you. Whatever’s in front of you took about 14 billion years, give or take a couple billion, to get here. Every single thing is a result of every single thing that came before it.
You’re in a world not of your own making. You’ve inherited it, due to actions that have nothing to do with you, the universe unfolding over billions of years, and due to actions you have taken in the past over situations that you weren’t able to handle at the time.
What you have to do is break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problems is to rearrange things outside.
When things feel uncomfortable, we think the solution is to stop them from coming in that way.
When things feel good, we want to make everything else come in that way.
So we’re in a constant battle with whatever is coming in, checking to see if we like it or we don’t like it. It’s exhausting!
Whether you resist the thing or try to hold on to it, it stays inside and overlayers the mind, like funky shades, coloring your world with funky colors.
As we do this, we’re creating the Personal Mind, our ego, filled with all our preferences and opinions and history and experiences.
Rocks in a river
You can think of your life like a river. Each bit of “I don’t like that” and “I want more of that” is like a rock. Over time, your river is filled with rocks and tree limbs and old tires and trash. The world comes in like water flowing through your river. That energy (the water) has to go around all of those little rocks and big boulders, causing little eddies and ripples and big breakers and billows. And secret little coves in there can become stagnant and foul.
As the water (the world coming into our awareness) makes its way around all the rocks and detritus in the river, you can hear the disturbance in the flowing stream, and it’s noisy. So that’s what we hear, and that’s what we focus on.
Why surrender?
Can’t we fight this? Shouldn’t we battle those big bad rocks?
Unfortunately, going to war over our “stuff” doesn’t work. It just makes the rocks bigger and badder.
But we do want to get rid of this stuff because it gets pretty crowded in there with all of those opinions and preferences, likes and dislikes, triggers and cravings.
Those rocks are stored energy. Each one knows everything that happened to create it … the smell, the feelings, the memories, the patterns.
We want to know why this stuff is coming up. We want to know why we feel a certain way, why we’re feeling aggravated right now.
But the truth is, you don’t really need to know. You can just accept that something is coming up. Understanding it is the booby prize. In fact, the more we understand it and name it and identify with it, the more tightly we contract around it and keep it nearby.
We are getting the mind involved in what is actually an energy situation.
Holding on … and on and on
None of this is personal. The world unfolds the way it’s going to unfold. We can let it come in, see it and feel it, and then let it go.
Holding on to something because we like it and we want more of it can be painful:
“Oh, no! It’s gone! I want it back! I’ll never see it / him / her again!”
Similarly, trying to push something away because we don’t like it is actually just holding on to it. We try to put it in its own special place, where we can keep one eye on it, and bring it back up, over and over, saying:
“I remember that. I definitely don’t want more of that! So I’m going to put it over here in this deep, dark place.”
Then when something comes up in the world that reminds you of that old, ugly stuff, you drag it back up and let it take you right back to those same old feelings, that same old hurt. It’s like smelling something horrible and capturing it in a jar so you can take it home with you and smell it again later … for years!
It’s all a waste of energy, a waste of your precious time here in this precious life.
So how do you surrender?
You befriend it all.
As the world comes into your awareness and you notice anxiety or sadness arising because it reminds you of something that happened long ago, you can say, “This moment is hitting my stuff.”
Instead of pushing it away, you can say, “Hello, Anxiety. I see you, Sadness. Hello, Feeling Hurt. Come on in. You’re welcome here.”
And relax.
Give it lots of room. Breathe. Let it sit in there, in your belly or your chest or wherever you’re feeling it.
Lean back slightly; give it space.
Say, “You get to be there, because you ARE there. This is what’s happening.”
As you lean back, you’re relaxing back into the seat of the Self, your soul.
After a minute, imagine it passing right through you, through your belly or chest, back behind you, out into the universe.
Say, “Ahhhh, that feels good to let it go.” And go on about your day.
Let it be easy.
If it comes up again, do it again. This is the practice.
Relax and release, over and over. It’s a dance of chi / energy / Shakti. One by one, you’re taking out those rocky blocks and letting that beautiful energy flow more peacefully through this river of your life.
Life as a practice
Meditation can help. It’s all about learning to let the Voice chatter about what you like and don’t like without you getting involved. So watch your breath, count your breath if you like, and when you realize you’re being taken away by the Voice again, go back to the breath.
Say a mantra if that suits you better: “I am relaxing and releasing. I am giving it room and letting it go.”
Practice saying, “I am me. I am the boss. This is my house. I’m the only one living in here. I’m keeping it nice and clean.”
Practice saying, “My spiritual practice is letting go of my stuff.”
Life is your practice. Let it be easy.
You can do this
You are capable of completely liberating yourself from these experiences that happened a long time ago.
There is nothing holding anything inside you except you.
You made your mind. It’s not more powerful than you. You can change it. You’re empowered.
And what happens next?
When life energy flows up into your heart, and it’s not hitting a barrage of stuff that you’ve stored, then it feeds you.
You start to feel happier.
You feel this uplifting energy inside you.
You start feeling love when you hear a bird singing. You feel things at a richer, deeper level, because you’re more open and receptive. You don’t have all those rocks in the stream creating turbulence, making noise, and blocking all of that beauty.
You see there is a river of joy flowing through you.
Find it, fall into it, and drown in that river.
Ready to try it?
I hope you’ll give this a go. It’s been super helpful in my life—in mundane situations that annoy me and in big, bad, triggery memories that I’ve dealt with for YEARS. Giving those moments space to be there, welcoming them in, knowing that they’ll stay for just a short time, and letting them go … what a relief!
Let me know how it goes for you. Remember, relax and release, over and over. That’s the practice.
Best wishes!
