What Is Surrender—Actually?
Most of us have an idea of surrender which involves letting go, stepping out of the way, allowing whatever will be to be, placing trust in God or a higher power, being passive vs. resistive and aggressive, etc. But perhaps this is only a partial understanding of what it is to surrender. Ammachi (The Holy Mother) says, “When complete surrender finally dawns, Liberation comes.” So let us look more deeply at the Idea of surrender, to better see what we may be able to do, to perhaps take us closer to an experience of such total freedom that great Masters speak of and enjoy.
If we have truly tried to practice surrender, we’ve probably become better at letting go of some degree of our needing to “control” – and maybe placing more of our trust in the Divine. But when we observe ourselves during certain challenging predicaments, or examine most of our relationships more deeply, or look at the extent of the judgement and inner fights which we haven’t let go of, the level of our ‘true’ surrender definitely comes into question.
True surrender is tested daily, by our ability to find freedom, love, and joy under each of the circumstances which we are presented with. Being happy or at peace in our own personal bubble is much easier than finding happiness with something directly in front of us which challenges us or pushes our buttons. This is why many yogis prefer caves to doing spiritual practices in the world.
In a talk by one of Ammachi’s head Swami’s, I heard Him say, “Surrender is an active process.” This is to say, we must actively work in our lives to find peace, love, and joy. They don’t come by passively sitting back and letting go, but we can reach these goals through actively and intentionally facing our challenges fully.
In discussing how to actively achieve more surrender, I often tell clients a comical — yet relevant — story of a man by the name of Mr. Jones, who has been living with a ‘cat phobia’ for most of his life. Although he feels ‘fine,’ staying home and passively avoiding facing his fear of cats, eventually his wife begins to lose her patience. She points out to him that he is slowly — perhaps unconsciously — becoming home-bound, and narrowing his lifestyle more and more due to his fears. In so doing, he hasn’t been sharing at all in helping with running all of their needed outside errands. So she finally puts her foot down and insists he go to a psychiatrist to deal with his problem, so Mr. Jones finally agrees.
Upon meeting with a psychiatrist, he convinces Mr Jones to try a rather counter-intuitive and uncomfortable method, in order to deal with his phobia, known as "Exposure Therapy." This involves the psychiatrist guiding Mr. Jones to try to feel difficult emotions he doesn’t want to bring up from his past. Mr. Jones is instructed to try to just be present with and feel all of his fear, worry, and anxiety, as he is brought into progressively more challenging levels of proximity to a cat The psychiatrist tells him, that the act of feeling his emotions, vents his emotion. Thus, “The emotions he is willing to feel will heal… The emotions he tries to avoid, will just keep him annoyed.”
So in the first session, Mr. Jones is instructed to do emotional release work facing a virtual image of a cat right in front of him. In the second session, he is asked to face and release the fears in him arising with a live cat in a cage in front of him. In his third session, he tries doing emotional release to vent the fears he experiences with a cat who is free to roam about in the room with him. And ultimately, Mr. Jones is asked to vent all of the upsets arising within him, while holding a cat on his lap. Each of these sessions lead him to deeper and deeper levels of surrender, helping him to release his fear and emotional pain from his past. Through closer and closer exposure to what he has been avoiding for years, he finds an unexpected path to freedom.
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
The psychologist’s role in this story may be taken by a psychiatric health professional in our lives, or by a healer, or by a Spiritual Teacher, or even by religious figures such as Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed. After coming to any one of these figures for help, we are asked to have enough trust to truly engage in the inner work necessary. Jesus explained this beautifully when he said that if we have at least the faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. Thus, we don’t need a very high degree of trust or faith in order to undergo the process and steps of learning to surrender, we just have to be willing to ‘do the experiment,’ step-by-step, with patience.
If we are seeking to achieve the highest spiritual goals of surrender, it may be helpful to imagine ourselves in a similar position to a high level athlete. When such an athlete approaches a coach, asking for help to achieve an even higher level of performance or to reach a higher goal, the athlete is going to have to submit to unlearning some of what they know, to receiving a lot of sculpting from the coach, and to upping their level practice on their own. If we are seeking God Realization or Enlightenment, it is like asking a coach to help us win something even more challenging than even winning an Olympic medal. While many people in the world have actually won Olympic gold medals throughout history, it has been a much rarer accomplishment to achieve a state of total surrender — like that of great saints — or God Realization and Liberation.
So waving the white flag, and letting go may be a good first step, but true surrender requires “work” -- actually actively facing what challenges our peace, love, and joy, and keeping it in front of us while letting go of all that arises. I give my clients self-healing processes which bring them through a step-by-step means to achieve surrender. However, in using our other tools — such as mantras, ceremonial worship, forms of transformational meditation, and practices given by Spiritual Masters — we can also achieve true surrender if we are really self-honest, and we do not stop until we’ve reach our desired goals. Every day we receive tests of our true surrender along the spiritual path. Young children demonstrate this so clearly by their innate wisdom of not stopping crying or venting, until they return to their highly desired state of light heartedness, joy, and sparkling love. They are an example of what our true surrender can look like, and feel like, if we don't stop until we've achieve it! ✨🌈💞🌈💞🌈✨
