How to Let Go and Surrender
What you can plan is too small for you to live. - David Whyte
There is a magical life ahead you cannot see. You may sense it. You may intuitively feel that as you do your work, quieting your mind and healing your nervous system, you are opening to a broader awareness and deeper experience of life.
Trust your senses.
At the same time, you may plan for the future and try to predict what will make you happy.
We do this because we yearn for a sense of control.
In doing so, we miss aligning with what wants to move through us.
Like holding water in our palms, the more we grasp life by attempting to optimize the future, the more it slips through our hands.
How do we reconcile trusting in the unknown with planning for the future?
It happens through the bedrock of spirituality:
Letting Go and Surrender.
What we surrender is our notion that we can control our lives.
David Whyte's quote reminds us that life's greatest moments come by surprise.
It would be unfathomable if you had told me 10 years ago I'd be writing to you about spirituality.
In 2015 I took a hike that led to my first spiritual experience. I didn't plan to have a radically transforming experience. It found me.
The mind can't plan for something that is beyond the mind.
While necessary, plans, predictions, and future-focused thinking block us from the universal mystery to show itself.
Worry
Most of us don't surrender because what could go wrong has a powerful grip on the mind.
Planning for something good and worrying about something bad are two sides of the same coin.
Just as the best things in life take us by surprise, so do the worst.
No amount of worry could have saved us from Covid or a jarring health diagnosis.
Letting Go
Letting go of worrying is a practice of self-reliance. As you accept and embody your present state, you are training yourself to handle whatever life brings. If you can be with the moment you're in, you can handle life.
It's more challenging to let go of our desire for a future state. The yearning for life to be different is the tightrope I walk with myself and my clients.
We want to get from A-B, but what if there is something greater than B? We can't know. This truth is why building a practice that brings us back to the moment is essential.
Letting go and surrender doesn't mean we stop taking action. We act, but we surrender to the outcome.
The irony is that when we want something to happen, it tends not to happen. The person at the meditation retreat who wants the spiritual experience is the least likely to have it.
Yet, once we let go of the attachment, we open a channel to receive that thing or better.
Sit with this affirmation:
When I let it go, I get it all back.
Yes, there are things to be smart about. Planning has its place. But remember, "The life you can plan is too small for you to live."
Or something more familiar, "Life happens when you're busy making other plans."
Resist the urge to control the future and surrender to now.
Feel your full embodied senses so that intuition and instinct can lead you forward.
When you allow your life to be lived through you, magic and miracles abound.
How to practice surrender:
- Listen to this song on repeat.
- Make goals not to get something you don't have but to embody more of who you already are.
- Practice spontaneity. Go out to eat without looking at yelp. Walk down the street where a few restaurants are and see which calls you. Go for a drive. Get lost. Trust your instincts on each turn. See where you end up and what newness shows to you.
- Break out of your routine. If you meditate in the morning, try it at night. Go for a long walk at a time you would never go for a long walk. Take a random day off and wander. Eat what you would make for dinner for breakfast. (Jk) But seriously, try something new. This will shift the grooves of your habituated mind and open room for Spirit to enter.
- Trust your history. If you are reading this, it means you can handle whatever life brings. You are strong. You are resilient. Trust yourself. You got this.