Surrender in Action by Polly McGee

I saw a friend in the street the other day that I hadn’t seen for a while. I almost kept walking, she looked so different it took my eyes and brain a moment to connect. When we spoke, she was in a deeply vulnerable space, her armor was all gone, and all that was left was the shimmering and quivering beauty of her turning up her face as it really is.

There was undoubtedly an excruciating process happening within her skin, but what was clearly also happening was a reckoning with that lifetime of trapped pain and emotion, which was cracking off the layers and bringing what was essentially her to the light. As we talked about where she was at, tears slid down her cheeks, and some remained there, like dew. There were no excuses or apologies needed, tears appear when they need to, and they were a perfect part of where she was, right at that moment, surrendered to the work of her life, for her life.

Oh yes, surrender is a thing. Its a very necessary thing, and not in the least theoretical or academic. Its a practice, you have to do it consciously and you need do it all the time. Its a spiritual neural pathway building exercise of taking yourself out of the equation as the doer and becoming a part of something greater that you don't have any control over, handing your divine mind the driving seat and resisting the urge to grab the wheel and spin it back where you came from.

Surrendering can be done in collapse as it was with my friend, or it can be done in grace when you are ready to release. It doesn't matter how you get there, but you have a moment where you clearly hand over the illusion of your perceived hand in everything, and in a Buddhist/Hindu framework your attachment to the unreal which your is own perceptions of how and why things exist, and just laser in on the present moment and your own divinity.

As we are all very bad at being in that place, that is why it is a practice, like coming back to the breath with meditation, or whatever, coming back from thinking about the past or the future, or your hurts given or received, to just being still and complete exactly how you need to be right now.

The question to come back to at all times when struggling with surrender, is ‘what do I need to know or be right now to deliver my gifts to the world.’ Then listen for what you body tells you, and obey - you are surrendering to your own higher self, or true nature. You are asking your intuition to guide you, and in doing so are surrendering to not knowing the answers from your logical rational delusional mind that is driven by ego, fear, shame and desire, but from your spiritual heart that knows what you truly need.

Every time you feel anxiety, or panic, or anger, or the need to strive, or be something else, or do more, or please more, just stop, become the observer, know that you are holding too tightly to a belief, and with lots of deep slow breathing stop and surrender to your own divinity and completeness, and that you think you know what that means, and ask what do you need right now.

Repeat endlessly.