Surrender is the most powerful and profound practice in every spiritual path. But what does it truly mean to surrender?
“Surrender” in layman language is misunderstood with failure or defeat, a punishment, a decision to let go, a task that we can accomplish with our mind, the decision to be comfortable with what is, an ending, a bad thing.
But surrender is not a strategy, it is in fact the absence of strategies. It’s waking up to realize that all the strategies have failed and we’re out of new ones.
Every one of us at some point encounters a situation that shakes the foundation of who we are, what we think we can bear and what’ll happen after that limit is crossed.
Surrender happens when we realize that we know nothing. It arrives when we know that we cannot think our way through where we are. This is extremely excruciating. We have to wait and have patience. We have no idea of what is going to happen; good or worse.
But what’s amazing is that when surrender comes to us, it’s accompanied by even greater feeling of ease, relief, and peace. It’s not like the situation gets better or easier, but we feel at ease knowing in our bones that we couldn’t have done anything to fix it and we couldn’t have handled it better. In this moment of surrender, there’s clarity.
As much as we are conditioned to never give up, in the case of surrender, giving up the mistaken belief that we are in charge of the situations, offers a profound relief. We’re not in charge; and what matters is present, not some imagined future we may or may not achieve. But,
But before we go deeper into the power of surrender, there are 4 illusions you must understand and accept.
The Illusion of Control: Nature is on a rhythm we can’t control. The ocean changes from calm to violent and back. Waves come in and then there’s nothing. All these are just a matter of minutes. We don’t control them, rather, we adjust accordingly.
But we spend huge amounts of energy and time in every other part of our lives, trying to control the uncontrollable. But reckon if what you’ve been trying to control so passionately, just can’t be. This creates a lot of unnecessary suffering, robbing us of the peace that’s present when we don’t know the outcomes.
The Illusion of Certainty: Once you accept that you control almost nothing, you’ll realize that certainty is also an illusion. Everything in this life is uncertain. Nothing is guaranteed. It’s uncertain whether the weather will be good today, or you will do something stupid today or someone you’re with may stay for the rest of your life or be gone tomorrow.
This uncertainty creates anxiety and rather than accepting the illusion, we try to mold it. But all this does is increases our anxiety. We get upset when situations doesn’t go according to our plan.
The Illusion of Security: The ability to let go of security, take risks and achieving something rewarding is admired, but rarely encouraged. We admire the cultural icons in music, art, business etc. but we don’t encourage our friends and family to pursue such a path because there isn’t a secure future.
The security illusion makes you forget that everything materialistic can be taken away from you. The only thing that can’t be taken away from you is what you create internally.
The Illusion of Permanence: What’s trendy today is going to be an afterthought tomorrow. The weather changes in days and every season. People who are young, become old. People who are poor become rich and people who are rich lose everything.
The illusion of permanence makes us believe that good things are going to last forever and bad things are never going to end.
THEN HOW CAN WE SAY THAT SURRENDER COULD BE THE KEY TO OUR JOY?
The moment of surrender is not when life’s over, it’s when it really begins. The logic of surrender is simple, but the practice is difficult. But, here are a few tips you can pursue:
First, realize that everything you fight has power over you; and everything you accept, doesn’t. So, willingly accept everything that happens because it happens for a reason. In a battle, surrender might indicate loss, but in life, it indicates a spiritual victory.
Second, surrender to your mortality. Accepting the fact that you won’t be alive one day is the ultimate surrender. Certainty is an illusion, but here death is the exception. In the face of death, nothing will matter as much as we think it does right now. The projects that fail, the people who hurt us; none of it will mean anything in the moment we take our last breath.
Third, learning about Therapeutic Surrender. It is an entirely different approach – a mindful one. Therapeutic surrender is a way to contact our own Wise Mind, the most effective and efficient way to lessen our suffering. Let’s look at an example to understand this.
The attitude of therapeutic surrendering doesn’t control or reduce anxiety itself. It means not taking the words of Worry Voice or False Comfort seriously. Therapeutic surrender is most effective, not when used to reduce anxiety; but rather as a way of being, while you experience it.
Therapeutic surrender requires you to make a distinction between what you reject, and what you allow. It pushes us to actively allowing the feelings and thoughts in us and gives us another set of reassurances, while refusing to do what our feelings and thoughts want.
When therapeutic surrender is well learned and has become our automatic response, here is what happens: the anxious thoughts no longer matter. They can’t unease us. They come and go. Successful therapeutic surrender involves refusing to give in to the urge for a solution or for reassurance. It means denying oneself the short-lived comfort that comes from “Let me think something positive” and “I will feel better if I just do this..”.
It is not an easy task to choose to change the worry into a thought, to mindfully focus on the nature of the discomfort, and then wait and let time pass while being aware of the anxiety. But it is an attitude everyone can learn with practice.
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