Surrender

Surrender has always had a negative meaning to me.  It meant giving up, failing, being weak, losing the fight. However as I invent my life here in LA and pursue my own spirital path, I keep hearing this word over and over again.  So much, that it has warranted me to inquire and  explore what I've been resisting and why surrender might be a good traveling companion for the journey I'm on.

I noticed the date yesterday and realized that I have been in LA for five months now. The time has flown by and yet my experience of time as I am inventing this stage of my life has been slow. Nothing is moving fast enough, I'm not doing enough, being enough, producing enough, and I've been looking through life from the lens of lack and fear.  I've also been tired, flighty, not grounded or present, distracted and exhausted.

I finally  acknowledged yesterday,  just how fearful I have been.  Fearful and then judging it, ignoring it and certainly not wanting to deal with it. And also not having some of the same habits in place anymore, so not sure even how to do about being with my fears or moving beyond them. 

In the past, when I was carrying all the weight I had, I had this armor and layer to protect me from the external (people, life, etc.) when I experienced fear.  I also had the habit of turning to not so healthy food choices to comfort myself (now, I eat a relatively clean diet  and have a different relationship to food, so I no longer find comfort in sugar, starchy carbs and salty snacks).  I also had the familiarity of my surroundings and was grounded in my surroundings  so I had some favorite places to go for solace, peace or whatever I might need.  And most importantly, I had my go to people for wisdom, friendship and the reminder of who I was in those moments when I somehow forgot.

I knew I was on a path and that for the next step along the way, I needed to be in LA.  I didn't entirely know why, but there was a knowingness from within that I trusted and I (here it comes) surrendered to it. And once I surrendered, the plan quickly fell into play and opportunities presented themselves.  Even finding my apartment and where it is located came about in such a surprising way when I gave up being attached to living in a certain neighborhood. I wanted Venice or Santa Monica and ended up in West Hollywood.  And in being in West Hollywood, I am within close proximity to some friends from Chicago, two of my master teachers who have become friends, and a social local coffee shop that has had me meet some great people who have connected me to others.

I also had a knowingness when I made this move that I needed to take myself out of the surroundings that had become so familiar and leave the life I had built for my next lesson on the path, the work there was for me to do and the life I was designing. And that whatever work there was for me to do, it was crucial to explore it and pursue it  in a new environment.  And I'm starting to see why.  In removing myself from what I had built around me and the people I surrounded myself with (the external things that I could hook on to). I am constantly forced to look within.  To examine and explore the depths of myself that need to be looked at for me to expand and grow.

Over the past few years, I have re-patterned myself in many ways.  My path started with a question...what would my life look like if it were bigger than me, if I were committed to something beyond myself? That internal question ignited a fire within that sparked the shedding of weight that was weighing me down.  With that weight gone, I was not only physically lighter but spiritually lighter as well.  I also altered thought patterns along the way as I lost weight that not only were also weighing me down, but had contributed to the weight in the first place.

I finally found my true essence underneath all of the physical and mental barriers once I removed them.  And now that see my true essence, the spiritual work for me has been to look at both the dark and the light sides of myself and accept all of it. Removing the distractions of a life I knew and entering into new surroundings that have been unfamiliar has been the catalyst for that exploration. 

In the absence of the familiar, all of my fears have started bubbling to the surface like lava about to erupt from a volcano.  With nowhere to hide so to speak, the manifestation of the darkness as emerged and as hard as I've been fighting it and resisting it and trying to control it or force it way, it won't go away.  The darkness being the thoughts of self-doubt, self-worth, the negative points of view, old ways of thinking that are holding me back, judgements, anger, moods, attitudes, emotions, states of mind, limiting beliefs, habits, patterns, ways of operating in my surroundings and with other people that are all no longer a match for who I am. The volcano is erupting and the darkness  must be faced for regeneration, growth and renewal, for in the aftermath of volcanic explosions come lush richness. It is in facing , accepting and making peace with our darkness that our light shines so much brighter.

 I had a vision this morning, as I was meditating, of being at the top of the volcano and looking down into its opening and seeing the red, not molten lava stirring, bubbling, and rising.  I took a deep breath and allowed myself to free fall, arms spread wide, into the opening and plunge into the lava. The experience that came over me as I envisioned that, was not fear but peace, calm a release of something.  It was surrender.

Consider that surrender as a spiritual act is powerful.  It is giving up and letting go.  It is  giving up that which is holding us back.  It's letting go of the fear and trying to control or fix things beyond our control, It is trusting that the Divine will catch us as we fall and provide something bigger and better then we could have invented on our own.  It is trusting that it WILL turn out, even though we don't see the outcome. It's a defining moment of saying, I can't and don't have to do this alone. It is looking beyond ourselves for the solution. It's throwing yourself  into the volcano because the cost of standing at the edge of the volcano and being paralyzed by the fear when you look into it's mouth is far greater then simply facing the fear and moving through it to the other side.

I end with this quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) who was a Jesuit, Paleontologist, Biologist, Philosopher and Visionary.

A friend passed it along to me and the opening  lines have been resonating with in this inquiry into surrender.

Trust in the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We would like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet, it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time,
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.