Surrender in layers

      The only thing I really celebrate this time of year is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day gives way to longest night that opens into the slow return of light. This week I’ve been reflecting on my year in preparation for celebrating the Winter Solstice on Sunday night.

   This year has been and still is a full tilt roller coaster of challenges, opportunities, good adventures and ginormous gifts. When I looked at where I’ve been this year, two things kept jumping out at me – surrender and freedom.

    Surrender gets a bad name in Western culture. It’s often associated with waving a white flag, giving up and relinquishing your power to some external thing. Before I got into recovery surrender was something forced upon me by various external authorities that wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do. My introduction to surrender as spiritual principle came when I got clean in the mid-eighties.  The idea that the only way I was going to learn to live clean was through surrendering to something greater than me was hard to swallow. I didn’t like the idea but it made sense. My addiction had kicked my butt. I needed to do things differently. I had no idea to do that. Surrender was the only practical option.

    That surrender, born mostly of desperation, was my introduction to the idea of letting go. Even in my first few attempts at that level of surrender brought an immediate sense of relief. Surrendering let me off the hook for trying to do the Universe’s job.

     From there my definition of surrender expanded to include not messing with the things I can’t change. There was a sense of both relief and freedom in looking at something I was scrambling to “fix” and realizing I couldn’t change it.  However both the relief and the sense of freedom were pretty limited.

     Although I was learning not to take action on things I couldn’t change, I didn’t know how to stop spinning around in my fuzzy little brain about them. Learning how to redirect my mind when I found myself endlessly analyzing a situation and running scenarios about how it might come out took years. I’m still a work in progress on that one.

     My path this year has brought me a new understanding of surrender. Surrender is the art of getting out my own way. Each time I surrender I cross the threshold of freedom and make more room in my life for magic.

     I also have a new clarity about what I let go of when I surrender. Surrendering to an external authority is surface level sort of surrender. I invite in something much deeper when I surrender to the unknown.

      This year has brought me face to face with big piles of unknown. I experienced many moments of yikes and wanting to fight with what was happening. Fear blocks surrender. Once I got past the fear and my ego’s desire to control, I found myself in a very different place. Although my head still wanted to run scenario’s and analyze the situation, it didn’t hook me for very long. I couldn’t talk myself into believing what my monkey mind was spitting out.

     Surrender is more than letting go of control. It’s letting of my illusion of control, any beliefs I’m holding that this “shouldn’t” be happening or that I “should” be in control. Control is an attachment to outcome. Yes, in most situations I do have a preference for how things come out. But when I keep feeding that preference with my attention until it becomes an attachment, I box myself in.

     That feeling of being cornered or boxed in triggers my fight instinct the same way it did when I was kid and an authority figure wanted me to do something I didn’t want to do. The difference now is my awareness that what I’m really being cornered by is not an external authority or situation. It’s me; my need to control. I can’t blame that on someone or something else.

     Being faced with an ongoing heap of unknown, I knew I had two choices. Surrender and go along for the ride or refuse to surrender and keep pushing the river. Again, surrender was the only practical option. Because I had more clarity about what I really letting go of, I was able to see surrender as choice and not something that was being forced on me.

     To my surprise, surrender without resignation brought a more enduring sense of freedom. Much of that freedom came from some trial by fire learning about staying in the now. With so much unknown, redirecting myself over and over again to the present moment seemed the only way to move with what is without making myself crazy.

     In that I discovered another lovely little paradox. Although I often chose surrender from feeling powerless, surrender is one of the most powerful choices I can make. All the power I have lies in the present moment. When I surrender, I give myself the power to be fully present and work with what’s happening.

     Another aspect of this new freedom has come from inviting the Universe, my soul and the unknown to be my partners in the life I’m creating for myself. My life works much better when I don’t limit myself to living in the confines of what my little self (personality, ego, etc.) can grasp.

      As Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” Surrender paves the way for everything being a miracle. When I’m able to stay in surrender and equal partnership with the unknown, my soul and the Universe, I let of my need to know where anything is going to come from. In that place everything that arrives becomes a gift.