You’ve heard it before.
If you’re seeking happiness, you have to drop your ego.
You have to give yourself over to love. You have to surrender.
This idea often arises in spiritual books and lectures. However, it usually isn’t explained clearly.
We need to surrender, and we’ll find peace.
OK, cool.
Surrender what? To whom? For how long?
If you’re like me, surrendering doesn’t sound appealing. No one likes being told what to do. And no one likes giving their power over to something else.
So why is the idea of surrender so universal?
Several years ago, I spent time meditating on this question. I thought of all the different ways that trusting your will in someone else's hands might make sense. The problem was that I couldn’t find one.
One day, it hit me that I’d been thinking about it all wrong. Surrender isn’t about giving your power over to something outside of you.
Surrender is giving over the will of your ego to the wisdom of your heart.
We fight our thoughts, wrestle our instincts, and overthink our feelings. Our minds are complicated. With so many thoughts flying around in our heads, it’s only natural for us to fight with them to try to gain stability.
The truth is most of us live in a mental tension feedback loop.
In other words, by grasping at our thoughts, we create the tension we wish to avoid.
It plays out like this:
–We feel overwhelmed by our thoughts.
–We try to think our way out.
–We find that doing that doesn’t work.
–We become more frustrated.
–We try to think our way out of the frustration.
–The cycle starts again with an elevated level of tension.
Surrender is noticing when this cycle starts to gain speed and learning not to be pulled into the ego-mind game.
Think of it in this way:
If a dog wants to play, they will bring you a toy and invite you to tug. If you tug, they will engage and tug back. The harder you pull, the more excited they get, so the harder they pull. On the other hand, if a dog brings you a toy and you ignore them, they eventually notice you aren’t interested and wander off to find someone who is.
Our thoughts work in the same way. If you engage with them, they will engage back. If you ignore them, they will simmer down and return to the nothingness from which they came. Simply notice them, then point your attention elsewhere. See them flow by, but don’t take the bait.
After you’ve practiced observing your thoughts, rather than being pulled into them, you can focus on the second part of surrender.
Dropping your awareness from your head to your heart.
Doing this means that when you’re getting whirled up in your mind, you notice it and choose not to engage. Then, you intentionally start focusing on what you are feeling.
Notice the sensations below the noise of your mind. That is where the answers you are looking for live.
Listen to the clear message in your heart.
What feels right?
What direction is your intuition guiding you?
What do you already know to be true but have yet to admit to yourself?
The magical part about dropping into your heart-awareness is that the answers you’re looking for are immediately apparent. It’s like tasting food. The second you taste it, you know whether you like it. You don’t spend hours pondering it. You either like it, or you don’t.
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