There’s a lovely song Steve likes to play (The Way Knows, Lyndsey Scott on Spotify). The lyric goes something like this: you don’t need to know the way, the way knows the way.
That’s surrender in a nutshell. Taoism in a few words. Flowing with life. Flowing with reality.
So much of our human suffering comes from resisting what is, right now. You can’t have wellbeing if you’re fighting what is.
Now has already happened. Resistance is futile. Now has already won.
How much easier would your life be, and how would it improve your wellbeing, if instead of fighting reality, you joined the winning side?
Not giving up. Aligning.
To the ego, surrender sounds like weakness. I’ll be walked all over. I need to fight. I need to resist.
But surrender doesn’t mean you don’t take action to change things. It means the action you take comes from alignment with reality, rather than a reaction to it. Inspired action, because it’s based on truth.
Someone’s got their hands round your throat. That doesn’t mean you’ve surrendered to being strangled. You’ve simply surrendered to the fact that it’s happening, and you respond accordingly. A kick where it counts might be exactly the right move. The difference is this: your response isn’t a tantrum against what is. It’s an alignment with what is.
If things aren’t going right, go left, because that’s the way. You might still find your way round an obstacle. The response is just based on what’s actually here, not on the story your ego wrote about how it should have been.
Your ego isn’t running the universe
Who put your ego in charge of how things should be anyway?
The ego is in constant conflict with natural law. It knows what’s best. It’s in charge. Reality knows something different. Wanting this moment not to be doesn’t change that it already is, it just causes suffering and contracts you.
When you resist the present moment, you’re resisting the very forces of creation showing up as this moment. Peculiar kind of madness, really, because on this level of mind, you are the ocean. Resist the wave and you’re resisting yourself.
If you’re in disagreement with the present moment, it isn’t the present moment that’s wrong. It’s your ego.
The hard slap of truth
Surrender to the most appalling situations and your realisation frees you. The truth can give you a hard slap, but it’s the truth, and now you know. And now you can take action accordingly, based on truth and reality, not on the ego’s stubborn resistance and denial.
One of the most powerful acts of surrender, for me, was acknowledging that drink was in total control of me. That I was an alcoholic. That I was powerless over that substance. Accepting that truth in that moment freed me. That’s step one of the twelve steps. Until then I was still arguing with reality. That one act of surrender opened the door.
We give fancy names like “surrender” to these things because it makes our egos seem important. In truth, surrender is just being present. Aligning your wants and desires with what is. And true wellbeing arises.
Hand it over, and watch what happens
When you stop fighting, something else can come through. Sometimes a solution materialises for the problem you’ve been wrestling with. Sometimes the thing fixes itself. Weird stuff happens.
I once lost all my cards out of my phone case while walking the dog. Next day I retraced every step, laser-focused, watching every blade of grass, and found nothing. On the way back I rang Steve and gave him a lecture on surrender… about an awkward property vendor we’d been struggling with. Mid-lecture I caught myself: you hypocrite, still resisting losing your cards. So I confessed it, and finally let go.
No word of a lie, when I looked down, they were right by my feet. They weren’t there till I surrendered.
That’s the invitation. Hand it over to something bigger than your little will. Stop contracting around “I don’t want this.” Soften into “this is okay, now what?” The suffering tied up with the resistance melts. You’re collaborating with life again.
If you’re going through something hard, use it. Bring acceptance to the unacceptable, not to the whole story of the suffering, just to what you’re experiencing in this moment. You’ve never got more to surrender to than now. And now is always okay enough to meet.
You’ve already arrived
Nothing is ever going to happen. Ever. Happening is a constant process, happening now. Are you part of that happening? Are you aligned with it? Or does your ego still think it’s master of the universe?
You can’t be further along in your practice than you are. So surrender to where you are. That’s the whole irony of this work. Are you trying to be present? You’re already here. Trying to be you? You’re already you. Where are you going? Nowhere. You’ve already arrived.
There’s nothing to do, except align yourself with life. With the Tao. With the way that already knows the way.
Watch the film this grew out of, The Art of Surrender (When Fighting Yourself Isn’t Working):
If you’d like to practise this in company, come for a weekend wellness retreat at Burwell House, or join free Tune In Tuesday on Zoom.
Love life. Live now.