If you grew up like me, with a disciplined and strict up-bringing, challenged to be self-sufficient from a very young age, to plan for everything in your life, with very little left to fate, this is definitely a very relevant topic for you.
So with such background, I figured out in my childhood, that in order to make it in a competitive and challenging world, I had to develop a central ego, to make sure that I am protected, resulting in a lonely wolf, a warrior, type of personality, the notion of asking for help rarely occurred to me. Of course this doesn’t come without a price, the pressure I put on myself was overbearing, and it led to intense level of anxiety. The irony is until very recently, I had a strong believe that this is who I am, this is my identity, until the illusion was unveiled, and I realised that this was a defence mechanism I have that worked for me, and it kept me safe throughout my challenging days, and my subconscious was holding on to it desperately, that I was in total denial of its shadow element.
In a nutshell, the most frightening situation for me, was anything that involves uncertainty, not knowing what the future holds for me, with such mindset, the most difficult thing to do is to loosen your grip, to let go of the need to control every situation, to SURRENDER!
What is the meaning of Surrender ?
There is a Sufi tale of a man on a quest who finds himself trapped in a huge public bath. The man is alone and knows that if he does not escape he will die. A parrot suddenly appears and tells him that if he can shoot it with his bow and arrow, he will be free. The man has three arrows and quickly fires the first. The parrot flutters into the air, and the man misses. The man turns to stone from the feet to the waist. He fires a second arrow, misses, and turns to stone up to the shoulders. He has one arrow left. What should he do? If he misses a third time he is dead.
This riddle beautifully illustrates the challenge of those times when our conventional ego strategies fall apart and will actually lead to our demise if we go on. The story ends when the man closes his eyes, says, “God is great,” and fires the arrow. This time he hits the parrot and is freed. When faced with no other options, he has to give up to something greater than himself to find a different source of resolution.
What do we surrender?
We surrender the “I”, “the Ego”, the conditioned separate self which operates from a set of beliefs, thoughts…etc together with all attachments to the attachments to the established identity, to our surroundings… in another words, we surrender our need to be individuals.
To understand the psychological meaning of this, it is worth mentioning Carl Jung’ theory on individuation. Jung used the term individuation “to denote a process of becoming a psychological ‘individual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity .” To individuate is to gradually actualize our innate capacity to live as a unique individual.
Jung recognized that there would be times on this journey when we are challenged to surrender the central dominance of ego to the deeper significance of what he called the “Self.” For Jung, “Self ” refers to the center of our totality—a deeper seat of wisdom that holds a sense of our innate potential as we unfold in our lives. He was not implying that the Self had some kind of ultimate existence, but that it is nevertheless experienced as a center of wholeness, just as the ego is experienced as a center of consciousness. The Self individuates us—that is to say, its “intention” is that we evolve in such a way that the relationship between the ego and the Self matures. At certain times on our journey, the ego begins to realize that it is not the prime mover, that there are forces at work that have far greater influence. The Self asserts a kind of psychological pressure on us to change and become whole, a pressure that can be extremely disquieting as the ego loses its safe, familiar ground. A major aspect of this undercurrent of change is the need to shift our understanding of what is really at the center of our lives. The shift of emphasis from the ego to the Self has been described as the shift from “I will” to “Thy will be done.”
To whom we surrender?
Surrendering can not be achieved if we do not have faith and trust in a bigger powers, it requires listening to the voice of truth and wisdom residing in our heart, instead of the voice of fear and doubt caused by our Ego, it is basically letting go to some deeper sense of purpose.
Surrender and Spiritual Awakening
The process of surrender begins with fear, our ego feels threatened by the truth, so the anxiety kicks in, as a defence mechanism to stop us from listening to our intuition, to our instincts, to the voice of our own truth, creating a paralysing fear of the unknown, which can vary from the fear of the future, fear of death, fear of taking a certain decision or following a certain path.
The key to surrender is letting go of control and resistance to what is, and instead accepting and working with the energy of the universe instead of working against it. However, surrendering does not mean sitting back and waiting, but having an active role in your life, but once you put on the work, planted the seeds, and made clear intentions, you can relax, trust and wait for your harvest.\
To wrap up this, I have learnt to differentiate between the energy of surrender and the energy of resistance, when I am in flow, peaceful, breathing easily, my awareness level is pretty high, and I am able to see the bigger picture, I know for a fact that I am in surrender mode. however, I can detect the resistance or forcing mode, when I tend to narrow my mind and go into the nitty gritty details, trying to control the How, when and who? , when the fear and resistance take over, I immediately become anxious, doubtful of self and others, with a very clouded vision, with time I have learnt to bring myself back to the present moment, by grounding, meditation, spending time in nature… I still do that mechanically, practising surrender, like they say fake it until you make it!!
LET GO AND LET GOD IN!!
Be the light!
