“Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about, talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in – or don’t, as the case may be. It makes no difference. Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life.”
~Eckhart Tolle
There is an open secret to the spiritual life, and it’s called surrender.
We can try our best to understand the nature of reality and our conditioning. We can hope forever that our troubling thoughts and feelings will subside so we’ll finally be at peace.
But until we surrender, the happiness we long for will elude us.
The word “surrender” means to give back completely, to release our ownership of something and offer it back.
What do you surrender?
- Your personal needs and desires
- Attachment to the content and meaning of all thoughts
- Attachment to things being familiar and known
- The need to know
- The need to understand and analyze with your mind
- The need to control
Thats a lot! It’s everything you hang onto that keeps you feeling separate—from others, from yourself, and from life.
In fact, you never owned these things—they were never you. Surrender brings you back to what was always true.
Surrender everything that makes up your personal identity, and where are you? Who are you?
You’re empty, willing, and totally receptive to let yourself be the instrument of something greater. And that something greater is the natural intelligence that is the pure substance of life.
Everything is given—the people you know, your talents and skills, the situations you find yourself in, the challenges and joys that make up your life.
You can subtract your personal desires and ideas about things, and your life is still here, beautifully unfolding as it is.
And things get a lot easier once we stop resisting this movement. We’re coming into alignment with things as they truly are.
To me, surrender arises from absolute devotion to the intelligence of the life force that is all-knowing, all-encompassing. I bow down with utter humility, beyond receptive, open with nothing personal in the way.
I don’t need to carry any concerns or figure anything out. I don’t go into my mind for answers.
I simply let myself be taken by the river of life that is already flowing, receiving everything that’s given without one second of hesitation.
What’s invited is pure devotion, releasing everything until you are nothing and letting yourself be the vessel that you truly are.
You love what’s given with all your heart. You’re a thousand percent willing to do the bidding that’s offered.
Surrender leaves nothing out, not one stone unturned. But don’t get deterred by the totality of what is being asked of you. Take a baby step in the direction of surrender.
- Stop questioning one idea you’re attached to and flow with what’s given.
- Put aside your view on how you want things to be in one situation and wholeheartedly embrace what’s actually happening as it is.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bow down with humility to your one true home, and there’s just infinite luminous pure being.
“Life is a mystery. You cannot understand it unless you surrender, for your intellect cannot grasp its expansive and infinite nature, its real meaning and fullness. Bow down low and be humble; then you will know life’s meaning.”
~ Amma
Hello Gail, I have a question: How do you surrender when things in your life aren’t working at all – when you are sick, alone, without employment, when this is “things as they truly are” and you life doesn’t at all seem like it is “beautifully unfolding”? Does it still hold true then that “I don’t need to carry any concerns or figure anything out”?
I find the idea of total, radical surrender and complete trust in life fascinating but sometimes it seems to need almost superhuman strength and courage – is it even possible to do this in dire circumstances?
In contemplating your question, Mia, I’m wondering what the alternative is to surrender. Surrendering to what is doesn’t mean you don’t take action, and it doesn’t mean you’re not wise about things that need to be taken care of. If there are things to do, do them.
In fact, as you let go of trying to figure all this out in your mind (I’m guessing recycling the same problems over and over), there may be space for some creative solutions that you didn’t notice before.
What I have found is that worrying doesn’t help – no matter what is going on.
So the question becomes: how do you meet the circumstances of your life? And that is the question for all of us in any moment. And here are the choices: fear and resistance or authenticity with what is and intelligence.
Happy to hear your thoughts…
Thank you, Gail. You’re right, what is the alternative to surrender? I’ve often asked myself this very question.
I think, my concern really is: Can I trust life? Can I find the courage to truly and radically surrender all my problems to life?
To be honest: I simply don’t know what to do and which action to take. I’ve spent the last decades of my life trying to solve my problems and I’m exhausted. If I let go, if I surrender all – can I trust life?
In response to another reader’s comment (“The Pain of judging thoughts”) you wrote: “Surrender into the One Heart, and let yourself be moved. There is an intelligence here that is way beyond the human mind.”
I’d love to access that intelligence but so far I haven’t been able to. Something in me is still afraid to trust life, to truly surrender it all – especially in the face of financial insecurity, loneliness, sickness. Do you know what I mean? I probably didn’t put that very well, sorry …
Hi Mia,
You might reflect on conditioned patterns that are running in you that may be keeping you from seeing things clearly and/or trusting life. There may be viewpoints you hold, and you may not even be aware of them, that are putting up a barrier to freedom. Maybe investigate that….