It seems that ‘to surrender’ is an impossible thing.

To do, at least.

But I also think that there’s something about the idea that makes it interesting and soothing.

Just like with ‘letting go’.

Not as an activity, per se, but more as a realization.

Sometimes when a story about unfairness and other people being stupid starts to build up for me, or when a tiny thought about the future being bleak gains some momentum, it seems that I can stop engaging with it.

Or that it can be recognized and released.

Like pulling back my attention and urge to struggle with the problem while it’s still relatively small.

I guess that feels like letting go, but not because I was holding it in the first place.

It’s not like dropping something or releasing it, but the simple act of neutral awareness that breaks the tension, and the spell of belief.

I don’t know.

Something like that.

At present, it’s easier to do than to explain, which is pretty amazing and something I’m very grateful for.

Because it’s incredibly practical.

Moods and feelings and stories and compelling ideas can pull us in really, really gently and delicately.

The movement into deeper trouble or darker colored experience, is mostly very subtle, from moment to moment, and always adjusting what’s needed to make it feel more real.

That’s why, even after 6 or 7 or 8 years (I don’t really know) after getting my first glimpses of a more authentic and effortless freedom, I still get conned by the mind.

This morning I had a few of those moments that looked quite daunting and problematic.

When that happens, it’s almost like an invisible shadow drifts over my life.

It feels heavy, it can feel really sad or even hopeless, and start all kinds of internal operations to fix it and run away.

Fortunately, years and years of consciously getting in and out of those moments, those gripping mental situations, have resulted in an authentic, spontaneous way of waking up to what’s going on, and, well, falling back into liberating simplicity.

Once the awareness of what’s going on kicks in, there’s a natural relaxation.

The usual hours and hours of holding on to what I was feeling are very rare, and most of the time I’m over it really fast.

I’m still not sure about the whole idea of surrender.

What it is, whether it really exists.

It certainly has a nice ring to it.

To me, though, it’s more like one of those smaller lightbulb moments where you just know there’s nothing to do or be or change, and the tightness of looking for control falls away.

The resistance dissolves.

Who cares what that’s called?

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(Photo by @sigmund, for Unsplash)