The Power of Surrender

The urge to exert control over situations is natural, but the power of surrender is more powerful. Once we do surrender—to flow, to God, to the Universe—we align with the self, as well as to God and the Universe. Through this process of allowing we are able to see more clearly our ego's machinations, our defenses, our conditioned mind frames. We can finally see ourselves from a distance as we simultaneously become more centered in our true spirt.

Gabby Bernstein recently has been talking about this idea of allowing. She is someone who has accomplished a lot in her external world like published books, appearances on talk shows, and yet her internal jump has been one of surrender and awakening to the belief that she will attract what is aligned to her. The difference is clear—surrendered alignment instead of the illusion of control.

I found a few other people on YouTube who talk about this in different ways. The algorithm finds them for me :) One of my favorite Ted Talks is by Peggy Oki entitled, Allow things to unfold and you will find your purpose in life. I also saw a post this very morning from Deepak Chopra on LinkedIn where he views desire and outcome as natural and to just allow it to be without any resistance or overthinking. Why get in the way of nature, right?

So why is the idea of surrender so powerful?

In our western society, action and self-determination is the lens through which we see everything. Manifest destiny is built into our American zeitgeist, and indeed there is something wildly powerful about self-actualization. Maslow placed it at the top of the pyramid—once our survival needs are met, we can actualize. We can be self-fulfilled. When I look at the language, it speaks to the surrender of what already is—what is actual, what is full and in the self already. In essence, all we have to do is to just tap into the abundance of what is vs feeling like it's outside of us. The trick is deciphering if what we desire is arising from the ego or from the soul. Soul desires do feel natural because they come from within. Ego desires don't feel natural (and often are blocked) as they are what we "think" we want and derived from the outside world.

So how do we tap into our soul desires? Often it's through coming into stillness, reflection or quietude. It's obeying ourselves and our truth instead of society's truth or someone else's truth.

For me, the changes I have made over the last three years have been small stepping stones, each one allowing me to trust myself and the universe more–from quitting my job, to taking time off, to following my urge to create an investing course for beginners, to ending a relationship that caused me so much uncertainty and doubt, to then taking a new job, to then getting laid off, to then going back to school for counseling, to then starting this blog. Who knows what is next? I like not knowing. I realized so much of my resistance to going with the flow and following myself was coming from a lack mindset–I have to keep building my resources, I won't find passion like this again, etc. Only after letting go of these beliefs, even if I did so timidly or slowly at first, did I realize how faulty my beliefs were, and how conditioned they were by fear and a lack mindset.

Each small step (or leap) we take leads to greater awareness and it allows for old identities and desires to give way to what's more aligned.

Surrendering is a two-step process:

For me, the first step is acknowledging how I truly feel about a situation or a person and acknowledging it fully. Second, and only then, I take the aligned action based on this truth. In the last three years of trying this out, sometimes the aligned action was to literally do nothing—in fact, doing nothing gave me the space to hear my true self, to let go of old, conditioned thought patterns or beliefs. Doing nothing was a beautiful process of unbecoming, even if it felt foreign and scary at the time.

Further, surrender to self (or one's truth) is the first step to surrendering to something higher, or is it the other way around? Sometimes when we surrender to something higher, it brings us back into our true self again. The order doesn't matter, as long as the truth is revealed—as they are one in the same.

Listening to ourselves

So often we are bombarded with other people's truths like our society, parents, friends, parters, and it's our most important job to find our own truth, and for that sometimes we need space, silence and surrender.

When we trust ourselves, we can trust the universe. When we trust the universe, we can trust ourselves.

Soul-Prompt: What area of my life am I not honoring my truth or my true feelings? How can I surrender to them fully?