If you’re like me, perhaps the practice of Surrender has been difficult and elusive. Surrendering is a concept I can understand intellectually, but I find it difficult to put into action. Usually for me, I have to jump through all sorts of mental hoops and scenarios before I am finally able to “let go.” Wouldn’t it be nice to walk around in a complete state of surrender and acceptance most of the time? Sounds very Zen, right?
So what is the secret? How do we let go of things when our minds are obsessively trying to figure them out? I’m sure you’ve heard before in meditation practice to simply “watch your thoughts” and not attach to them. To “go back to the breath.” Most of us are wired to avoid our bodies and feelings and to look for solutions and answers in our thoughts and beliefs. Instead of sitting with an emotion awakened by a certain situation, we most often let the command center in our heads take over and run through all of the “what ifs” and “if onlys.” We obsess about making different choices, what is “right or wrong”, or compare ourselves to other people and likely live in a lot of negative self-talk and self-punishment. We BELIEVE our thoughts to be doctrine, even though they are only just a piece of the pie, not the whole thing. Just because the mind has a thought does not mean it is real or represents truth, nor do we have to believe it. Thoughts are like seeds sowed in the soil of our minds; if we water and feed them, shine sun on them and tend to them, they will grow—for good or for bad. But if we let them go and see them as only a possibility, we can decide if we want to feed them or let them disintegrate into our grey matter.
Let me break it down: Circumstance—>somatic response/feeling—>rapid fire thoughts. This is what actually happens each time we meet with an experience. But for most of us, the formula looks more like: circumstance—>rapid fire thoughts. We skip that middle part, which is actually the most important part, because we don’t want to actually feel the feeling, and my guess is most of us haven’t been trained to identify it and sit with it. This is hard because our nervous systems are activated and our mind wants to try to make sense of what is going on so that we can fix it. We also live in a head-based culture that’s obsessed with logic and thoughts. This creates a lot of people who are disconnected from their bodies, feelings, and their authentic selves. This is why people are “anxious” and depressed, and why people get “social anxiety.” Instead of focusing on the feeling that has emerged, we get in our heads and pay more attention to everything that’s happening in there as opposed to getting still and being present to what is happening in our bodies.
In his book, Letting Go, Dr. David Hawkins tells us that “Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it.” I love how directly he describes the process, making it less abstract and more practical. But of course, the actual execution is not as easy as even its best, most practical description. For one, we tend to judge our feelings. We think there’s something wrong with whatever has surfaced, that we’ve either misjudged the situation or shouldn’t feel how we’re feeling. But let me ask you something. If we could control what feelings come up, wouldn’t we in fact be doing just that? Feelings are not chosen, they are incoming. It is our job to simply bear witness to what has come up, to acknowledge it, and to allow ourselves to feel it without judgment. Because, after all, the feeling is what it is. The aspect of this process we can control are our thoughts (but this is hard!), and we don’t have to give our thoughts so much power. “Thoughts are merely rationalizations by the mind to try to explain the presence of the feeling” writes Hawkins.
We will try all sorts of things to avoid feeling the feelings, and obsessive thinking and/or intellectualization is just one way. Alcohol/drugs, food, compulsive behaviors, constant working, scrolling, talking or having to always be busy: these are all ways in which humans attempt to escape. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable, because we don’t like it, because we are socialized to believe that some feelings are good and others are bad, and because a lot of times we have biases against certain feelings (anger, for example). Just because you don’t want to be angry or like anger or possibly have a negative association with it, doesn’t mean anger is not sometimes justified or in fact necessary in a lot of situations. One thing anger helps us do is realize it’s time to establish boundaries or protect ourselves.
So the next time you find yourself obsessively thinking about something, try asking yourself how you FEEL. Acknowledge the feeling, whether it is fear, guilt, anger, jealousy, or sadness, and allow yourself to have it. You can say to yourself, “Hey, it’s okay that I feel this way right now.” Because it actually IS okay to feel however you feel. Try sitting with that feeling and remember that it’s temporary and the energy associated with that feeling will dissipate in time. In fact, the feeling might even be there to teach you something about yourself, whether it’s about the present moment or one from your past (is there a lingering experience you need to sort through?) A final thought to take with you as you think about the role thoughts play in the concept of surrender: “Thoughts are like goldfish in a bowl; the real Self is like the water. The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.” - David R. Hawkins