Surrender

I never really liked the word surrender. From the time I was quite young, the word reminded me of weakness, felt a little too much like giving up……. and it reminded me of all the evangelical services I went through when I was younger, with people being all emotional, singing “I surrender all”, getting all hyped up, running to the altar….. only to come back to earth and find out that nothing had changed… and actually feeling a bit like having been tricked… and a bit embarrassed about the whole thing.

But recently, the word opened up a different meaning.

It presented itself as “surrender as a strong and quiet decision”.  Almost like a stronger version of “letting go”…. Not a decision made out of giving up, or giving in, or weakness, but rather a positive, strong decision based on the FACT that getting caught up in emotional responses to situations NEVER has a good outcome. The reason? Because emotional responses on our part draw us away from our active participation in this NOW moment. A moment not lived in NOW, is “a pity”.

Like the queen says in response to Red Rose tea only being sold in Canader….                     “Only in Canader eh? Pity!”         ….. Got drawn away from NOW, eh?… pity!……………

So, I am going to test this concept….. see if is as strong a runner as it seems to be, coming out of the shoot………….

And it has already borne fruit……

In psychology, we so often pay more of our attention to what was the CAUSE of our suffering….. but in practicing surrender, I find that it is our response that matters, not what caused it. (and we all know this, it isn’t some kind of wonderful new revelation!)

When I began looking at my reaction to surrender, to my surprise, I found an angry child hiding under it….. it was like I pulled off the cover of my attitude towards surrender, and found a child that was scared to show his emotional nature to the “cold world outside”….. he was unwilling to take the cover off and surrender, because he had been shamed and scoffed at so many times for being a “cry baby”, boys shouldn’t act like that!!!!… that he never wanted to “go there” again….. (at this moment, he is still hiding there, but he has started to consider coming out….. he seems to have some trust issues… hehe……like our little bird… gradually gaining trust that he can be friendly with us and not get hurt…..

This process of self inquiry never ceases to amaze me.

I would have never thought that something like that was hiding there….. really in plain sight……

So what seems to be the upshoot of this way of looking at surrender?

Surrender, in response to an emotional reaction towards things, persons, circumstances, memories.

Here is an example: Laying in bed, the thought camme to mind of something I did to hurt someone in the past… and the sticky, clinging mind,  began to “ruminate” on it. (I call it the frogs tongue… shooting out and sticking to things)

A sense of tightness started in my stomach…… (the even more strange thing is, that it may actually have been this physical feeling which gave rise to the uncomfortable memory!! Chicken or the egg…..) 

It was in response to this thought and tightness happening, that the thought arose….. why don’t you surrender to it?….. in a way, admit to the situation….. then say the “Verse of Atonement”…… and then drop it……

It worked, and it actually acted very much like the other self inquiry process I have been using for a few years now….

There was very much a release of the tightness (body shift) …. and there was no room for an “delusional ego” response….. it just stopped.

The research continues………………