For my 80th article I feel compelled to discuss surrender. It's such a huge topic, often referred to in articles but rarely explained, with its meaning often assumed and much misunderstood. But it underpins everything. What is surrender and how does one do it? The more you let go, the higher you will rise...
What is surrender?
Have you had enough of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory? It's always your fault (your ego). You never have to rationalise what's right. Do read on...
We are not talking about military surrender here. It is in spiritual surrender that victory is won.
When most people hear the word ‘surrender’, in the spiritual context, things such as changing your current habits and lifestyle, curbing the 'freedom' you are presently enjoying, having to obey someone unquestioningly, putting an end to your obsessively material life, etc. grip their mind, and hence, in the process, one garners fear. But can this all be true?
Spiritual awakening opens up the path to our liberation; liberation, meaning complete freedom, eternal joy and peace. So how can it suggest anything that creates fear then? Therefore, this is not true! Today, let us understand the right meaning of ‘surrender’…
Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher, wrote “Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about, talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in, or don’t…It makes no difference. Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life.”
Tolle defined surrender as:
“Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.”
Elsa says in 'Frozen' "Let it go, let it go! Turn away and slam the door!" Surrender is the same as 'letting go'. This is the result of letting go of judgement (of your Self and others) and resentment. It is key to healing, Self-compassion, and any spiritual awakening and Enlightenment. As part of this we need to let go and surrender our attempts to control people, places, events, and things. If we don't, we will never find joy or peace. Without it there is no Utopia and no Heaven - only Hell. When we surrender, all is well. When we don't surrender, we become spiritually dis-eased, deadened and dead to the world, and mentally ill. Being able to let go is also called emotional sobriety. It also means letting go of thoughts and emotions about those people, places, and things. It means letting go of your ego and embracing who you truly are. How do you surrender, when there is nothing left of you? Not even your Self-worth.
In the Book of Romans 8:31-33 in the Bible it states “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” How we respond to people, conditions, situations, things, and events in our life is our choice, and it is the choice we make that works either for us or against us. We are so accustomed to the latter, since childhood, that we are resigned to it. But it really needn't be that way...
We can choose to respond with trust that if God is for us we have all we need in every moment, through unconditional love, to get us through with flying colors. Or we can choose to respond with fear (the language of the ego), convinced that there is some power that is opposing our wellbeing and keeping what we need from us.
Judgement stands in the way of everything that the Universe is going to give to you. Judgement separates you from everyone else. Surrender is not passive or giving: It's the most powerful thing that you can do to change your life.
When you know that you don't know then all is well. You are able to get off your throne of judgement and be centred enough not to find right and wrong in your judgements. See your self from another's point of view. An egocentric perception of life leads to conflict, drama, and turmoil. Stop trying to run the Universe. The ego grows back so quickly, It's a lifetime of work, with daily ego deflation (as Dr Harry Tiebout described recovery).
The problem is always you, and your perception of things. Get off your high-horse of judgement. You are wrong about everything. How wrong you are in your perception of life itself. You are the source of all your conflict and drama. You have an illusion of a Universe that is bad, but you are wrong. The Universe is trying to conspire for your greatest good: It's just that you keep getting in the way by trying to control it.
When we let go, we create space inside us that allows us to connect with ourselves, others and to our Higher Power (or God, whatever you want to call the Universal force and intelligence that underlies everything). It means letting go of our ego, and surrendering to love. I simply have to look around me - anywhere, and what I see are that a lot of people are struggling with life: Pretty much everyone: If you let go of your ego, then you are spiritually safe. Unless the person can enlarge their spiritual life through self-sacrifice and constant work in service of others then they are stuffed.
Surrendering is a falling into God or into God's arms: That is, into the arms of unconditional love. Once we have created the inner space described above we must fill it with God. The soul is in perpetual motion; in the words of St. Caterina of Siena, “The soul cannot but move: If she does not go forward, she turns back.” It's crucial it is to fill our newly-cleared soul space with the light of the Divine Spirit; if we don’t, something else will creep back in, another barrier and block from our surface-selves - the ego. If we don’t replace the negative with the positive, more negative will sneak back in! She continued “The soul cannot live without love. She always wants to love something because love is the stuff she is made of.”
Imagine a hula hoop around you. Everything inside the hula hoop is your business. Everything outside the hula hoop is everyone else's business. Let it go.
In the Bible in Matthew 12:43-45 it states “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”
We avoid this “worse” state by fully surrendering to our Higher Power. We need to allow ourselves to accept God’s plan for us, in all its manifestations and blessings. We must remember that all things - all things, no matter how troubling they may initially seem - work for good, for our ultimate blessings and renewal, if we allow the God’s Grace to flow through us. When we surrender, we allow all to be well within every aspect of our lives. Creative flow blossoms; the spiritual river is unimpeded by litter and debris, and we are able to manifest abundance. As we grow within the spiritual life, it’s essential to raise our arms in joy and full surrender, and have Faith.
The fourth century theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo, spoke of the three powers of the soul: Memory; Understanding; Will. When we surrender on the purest and deepest level, our eye of understanding is opened and we begin to truly see. Through prayer and asking, we’ve ignited the memory of our spiritual potential. This naturally leads us toward a desire to release every barrier standing in the way between us and divine unity with God. After releasing these blocks, we find ourselves naturally sinking into the act of pure surrender, which is the spiritual filling of our newly-emptied vessels. This deepens our understanding of goodness and love, the two core elements of God. As our wisdom and understanding grow through the re-remembrance of our spiritual Selves, we find that our personal will naturally begins to align with Divine Will. We love what God loves - which, simply, is love itself - and hate what God hates - the opposite of love, which is selfish self-will. We gently tumble into the soul space of our spiritual BEinghood, realising that we truly are made in the image of the Holy Spirit.
Surrender is a dynamic combination of release and trust, emptying and filling. Once we’ve released our useless stuff, we fill our newly-created soul space with the positive light of God. “Let those who have ears, hear” Jesus tells us. To Hear on this intuitive level requires a complete surrender of Self, a trust in the path of God’s glorious will. It requires an Enlightened Witness.
Francois Fenelon, the 17th century French theologian, wrote “Lord, I don’t know what to ask of you, but You know what I need. You love me better than I know how to love myself. Father, give to Your child that which he himself doesn’t know how to ask … Teach me to pray. Pray Yourself in me.”
The spiritual life is like a hot bath; we have to ease into it, slowly at first because the intensity of the water will scald us if we leap in. We have to adjust to the heat, acclimate to the temperature. Once we do, we’re able to sink in and enjoy the luxuriating depths. We completely surrender ourselves to the calm of the water. We let go. The bliss can be overwhelming at first, emotionally, physically, and mentally, to the point where you have to sit down. But as you progress you can dive deeper and deeper towards the source of the bliss.
Meister Eckhart once said: “Lord … I am ready for anything you will; only give me the will to want what you will.”
This is the core of surrender, the willingness to release every aspect of ourselves in order to gain the Truth of our spiritual BEinghood, in perfect alignment with our divine limitless potential. We’re all are born into a state of forgetting, and our memory is reinvigorated only when a drop of God’s Truth is allowed to filter through, guided by the release and surrender of our souls, the cleansing of self, the reformation of our spiritual lives in all our divinely-given potential. The act of surrender helps us to align the three powers of our soul, reinvigorating our spiritual memory so we can embrace God’s presence and blessings. This helps us to understand greater spiritual depths and attain a larger range of personal freedom and growth, which naturally leads to Divine Alignment.
Evelyn and Muriel said in the film 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' "Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected." The reply was "Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff."As my friend and fellow coach, Matt Main wrote in his book 'A Gold Medal is a Wonderful Thing' "When we let go of how we think things should turn out, relax, surrender and let them unfold naturally, we're often surprised at how they turn out better than we could have imagined."
The 'Tug-of-war metaphor
The metaphor that helps at this point is that you are at one end of a 'Tug-of-war' rope, with the whole Universe at the other end. There is no way that you can win, and yet you try with everything in you. Your ego wants to be in control. Imagine that Yoda, the sage from 'Star Wars' appears and he simply says "Let go, Luke". You say "No way! I will lose." Yoda says again "Just let go of the rope, Luke." You let go of the rope, and the Universe falls on its ass. You win. That is surrender: Stopping fighting the Universe. Just surrender. This metaphor is from the brilliant book 'Living Untethered' by Michael Singer.
Surrender
Surrender and the 12 steps
When you need to surrender, it is because there is too much you inside of you between you and God. You need to empty your cup of 'stinking thinking' (your ego mind) so that God may fill it instead. Until you surrender, there is too much of you in the way to hear a higher message. There is too much us between us and others or God. Once you surrender you can hear. When you reach a rock bottom you have had enough you kicked out of you to create a space. God deplores of vacuum and fills the space without your 'monkey mind' interfering. Dr Harry Tiebout (along with the famous psychiatrist and spiritual Master Carl Gustav Jung) was a doctor who was instrumental to Bill Wilson setting up 12-step fellowships, and he talked about "The amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego." You can be beaten to your knees and your ego grows back quickly like a rapidly invasive tumour. While you are distracted, your ego is doing press-ups, getting ready for a comeback.
The best 12-step talk on 'Surrender' ever - the first three steps are all about surrender
The root of this trouble is self-centredness and selfishness. You are obsessed with being at the centre of everything and in control of everything, but you can't be. It may present like clinical depression, but in reality it's a spiritual dis-ease. You feel at the centre of the world, as if it revolves around you. You smother your very BEing with your self. Dr Harry Tiebout talks about the whole process of the 12 steps being about 'daily ego deflation' - or 'DED.' Because without it you will end up dead. One in four alcoholics commit suicide.
Buddhists say that "When the student is ready the teacher appears." This teacher is your Enlightened Witness. You can't outrun your addiction. You can become 'unsurrendered'. You live in emotional pain. Adam and Eve lost perspective because they lost Heaven, by eating from the 'Tree of Knowledge." Maybe Heaven is just a new pair of glasses.' There is no pain except for our resistance to accept life on life's terms.
Carl Jung and William James (the great American psychologist and philosopher) said the same thing - that spiritually ill (in others words ego-driven) people have an absolute inability to observe or listen, to see, or to hear, anything new: They are only capable of listening, observing, or hearing to see if they are already right. As you get sicker, you become even more judgmental or opinionated - that's just the ego growing back like a tumour recurrence. You find your self consumed with you. The ego is an un-surrendered control centre that is trying to run the Universe: It can't! You are retaining your will as you haven't done the inner work to dismantle the judgement machine that is your ego. You are trying to control the Universe/God/love. This leads to fear and anxiety (not getting your way) and depression (the Universe not doing your will). Maybe life is not awful - maybe it's just your judgement of it?
The most important thing is to know that you don't know. Get your opinion and judgement out of the way.The Big Book of the 12 steps only asks you to look at things from an entirely different angle. Perhaps the person that has 'harmed you' is spiritually sick too. This is how you move on from judgement.
It's a spiritual axiom that when you are disturbed at all, then there is something wrong with you. Because you are the source of your separation, conflict, drama, and judgement, because there is too much of you between you and your Self, others, and God. Serve either a power greater than your self, or other than your self. It's just about letting go of your ego. Your ego stands in the way of your usefulness. Remove it so that you can claim your purpose and find your primary aim. Stop serving yourself. We throw ourselves into helping others with similar problems. In that atmosphere we will often overcome our excessive concentration upon ourselves. We have an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did. Ego is a malady of your BEing.
Emmet Fox, who was the Spiritual Advisor to Bill Wilson and to the early AAs said in his pamphlet 'The Golden Key', “We lose nothing in surrendering to God, and gain everything we could possibly imagine, plus more.”
As we came to appreciate the magnitude and mind-altering nature of our universal societal addiction to external validation, and the extent to which it had perverted our value system, we had to admit that we could not reshape our whole identity unaided. In the stark recognition of our profound frailty, we experienced the need to find a 'Power greater than ourselves' - something that would be at least one step ahead of our diseased intentions, and give us the consistent guidance we could not provide for ourselves. The possibility of finding some form of Faith, based not on any specific conception of “God” but rather on a need to find such a Faith, was the beginning of spiritual healing. An Enlightened Witness is essential here.
Step 3 of the 12-step programme is "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God." This is surrender.
Trust the process
The Chinese “Maybe so, maybe not” parable
I had never heard the story of the Chinese farmer before my own transformative journey, but when I did, it changed everything for me: "A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbours cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbours shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”"
What is the result of surrender?
Surrender and 90% of the angst plaguing your being will melt away. Why is that? Because virtually all people resist most of the moments of their lives…And they don’t even realise they’re doing it. Example: someone in front of you is driving slowly. You clench up. Get annoyed. You resist. Instead, surrender to it. It’s what’s happening. It’s part of the flow of life. When you resist it you’re only hurting yourself. Another way of looking at it is another golden aphorism from Eckhart: “Accept each moment as it is.” Accepting something doesn’t mean you have to like it. It will make a huge difference in the quality of your life if you accept these moments as opposed to resisting them.
Get yourself out of the way of the flow of your life. Accept the moments life throws your way. Don’t resist them. If you do, your body and mind will unclench into a state of ease and peace you never knew was possible.
What does the Bible say about surrender?
Not surprisingly, the Bible refers to letting go and allowing a higher intelligence to manifest through us, in multiple passages:
“Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Mark 14:36
“My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.”
Proverbs 23:26
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” Romans 12:2
"I can do all things through him who strengthens me."
Philippians 4:13
"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you."
Psalm 32:8
How to surrender
To have a spiritual awakening, you need to surrender to the Divine. But there are many misconceptions about surrender. It does not mean that you sit there and refuse to take action. It does not mean that you are passive. Instead, surrendering is about understanding that some actions you take are and are not necessary. It also means that you have Faith that what you want in your life will come to you. Some actions may be counter-productive to the process of your spiritual awakening. Surrendering is a realisation that you do not need to do it all, but to act when you feel inspired.
My view is to remain in a state of permanent presence, and when a decision or a choice has to be made, just don't get up from your seat of ease, and simply ask your Higher Self "What would love/God do?" Lean away, respond and never react.
Surrendering is the key to reaching Enlightenment and your spiritual awakening. If you can’t relax and let go, then you are holding onto your ego. If we hold onto ego, it is impossible for our spiritual awakening to begin.
As we learn to surrender, we learn how to let things go. We do not need to do everything. We only need to do what is necessary and then let the rest go. It is hard for many people. But especially those who feel that having control over every action helps them feel at peace. But real peace happens when we learn how to surrender.
Surrendering is one of the most challenging steps to your spiritual awakening. It is hard for most people not to have total control over all actions during this process. If this is hard for you, you can surrender in stages rather than do it all at once. Start by surrendering and letting go of one thing at a time. As you do that, you will get rewards for your effort. Seeing results can motivate you to surrender more until you reach Enlightenment.
As you work on surrendering, you may feel you need to control every step and every action. But controlling things in our lives can get in the way of our true spiritual awakening. Once you can surrender and only do what is necessary, you will reach true Enlightenment. You will also release worry about anything else out of your control.
Low-hanging fruit
You can incorporate surrender into your life. How? Like anything else, you practice. Just as you would learn to play the piano or tennis. Start with the everyday life stuff, the 'low-hanging fruit', like driving or waiting in lines while doing errands. The moment you find yourself becoming annoyed (i.e., resisting), take a deep, conscious breath and tell yourself to surrender to that moment.
Higher-hanging fruit
Once you get better at those, graduate to some higher-hanging fruit, like your colleague saying something that really annoys you. Again, take a deep breath and surrender to the flow of what’s happening. Accept that moment (again, you don’t have to like it). After a few breaths, respond to the situation from a place of nonresistance.
Even a few minutes of meditation can make a difference when letting go of stress and is an essential .practice for surrender and Enlightenment. To read my article all about meditation click here:
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is like 'meditation on the move', and works particularly well during simple repetitive tasks such as climbing stairs, but can be expanded to include your whole day. Rest in present moment awareness. You can use awareness to help you overcome your doubts and be diligent and focused. It can even help you increase your alertness.
Patience
You should never hurry the process. Everyone goes through their journey to Enlightenment, so do not rush it. It's not about hustle or hassle, It's about the choices that you make.
Have Faith
This process may not always make sense to you. But keep your Faith in it, and you will see how well this will work for you. Allow your Self to be guided by the flow of the river that is your life. You can stop swimming against the current now.
Step 3 of the 12-step programme
Note that step 3 cannot be taken in isolation, but it is key to surrender. "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God." This is pure spiritual surrender. The situation was roughly this: if our addiction to external validation was such a fundamental part of our personality - if it had developed long ago, during our childhoods, and had shaped or deformed many of our other personality traits, our relationships, and our value system - then we had to ask whether all our prior ideas about who and what we were might be incorrect or ill-founded. This is not to say that on a practical level everything we thought we knew about ourselves was wrong. But if we really wanted to change ourselves and lead new and sane lives, ultimately having a spiritual awakening and Enlightenment, we had to at least pose the question, if only on the abstract level. We had to admit to the possibility that anything, if not everything, we believed could be faulty.
To use the Biblical expression from Psalms:23:5 of the “Cup that runneth over,” we were like cups that had run over with obsession - with a need for external validation in the form of 'imitation love' - power, money, sex, substance addictions etc. Step 3, as a spiritual exercise, suggested that we could choose to tip our own cup over and let the 'conditioned societal sickness' run out of it. We knew that having done this, we could not refill the cup through our unaided will, because we had become convinced that any solitary attempt to do so would inevitably take on the obsessive/compulsive character of our current day personalities. We could not outwit our own addictive natures. The enemy was us.
The Zen parable of the cup of tea
Once, a long time ago, there was a wise Zen master. People from far and near would seek his counsel and ask for his wisdom. Many would come and ask him to teach them, enlighten them in the way of Zen. He seldom turned any away.One day an important man, a man used to command and obedience came to visit the master. “I have come today to ask you to teach me about Zen. Open my mind to Enlightenment.” The tone of the important man’s voice was one used to getting his own way.
The Zen master smiled and said that they should discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the tea was served the master poured his visitor a cup. He poured and he poured and the tea rose to the rim and began to spill over the table and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. Finally the visitor shouted, “Enough. You are spilling the tea all over. Can’t you see the cup is full?”
The Zen master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest. “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”
We could see that if we were ever to be as cups running over with redeemed, non- compulsive lives, then some Power greater than ourselves, the need for which we had already affirmed, would have to do the refilling. Such a Power (He, She, It, or They) would do that in Its own time, according to Its scheme of things, not our own.
As Albert Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” You have to get rid of your 'stinking thinking.'
What would our lives be like, we wondered, if we were really to empty our chalice of our contemporary dis-ease and refrain from refilling it again ourselves, and instead let it be filled eventually through God’s grace? We simply could not know. There were no guarantees. All we knew was that we did not want to go back into our active external validation addiction again. The certain hopelessness of that condition, were we to go back, compelled us to move forward into the unknown. With no guarantees, and with much apprehension, but with at least the rudiments of Faith, we came to understand that if we were unable to prescribe our own treatment for external validation addiction, then we would be better off turning “our will and our lives over” to the God of our understanding, even if we did not know what might happen as a result. We made the decision to do this, to surrender, however abstract the idea seemed.
Having made this decision, how could we now commence our new relationship with God? The answer, like all good answers, was simple. We had already been staying clear of resisting the flow of life day by day for some time. What we added to this outward change in behaviour was prayer. We now began each day in communion with the God of our understanding by asking for help that day in staying free of addictive behaviour. We asked also that God help us in the immense undertaking on which we had embarked, that of undergoing the death of our former, dis-eased self, and the rebirth of a redeemed, affirming, Enlightened person.
The time-honoured Serenity Prayer became a part of our daily repertoire for handling challenging and potentially dangerous situations:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done.
We found that the door to awareness, once opened, could not be closed. We had seen - we had even felt - occasional hints of what a healthy existence could be like. We knew it was open-ended: there was no apparent upper limit to the spiritual, emotional and mental wellbeing toward which we were now moving.
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I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my website for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching.
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Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.