Surrender

So what’s it take to move out of the mud and let love in?

Remember that magic line at 200 on the Hawkin’s scale?

It starts with courage.

“Life is full of diving boards and other precipices, but, as we’ve seen throughout this discussion of emotional agility, making the leap is not about ignoring, fixing, fighting, or controlling fear—or anything else you might be experiencing. Rather, it’s about accepting and noticing all your emotions and thoughts, viewing even the most powerful of them with compassion and curiosity, and then choosing courage over comfort in order to do whatever you’ve determined is most important to you. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking.” 

― Susan David, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

Notice that the first steps out of suffering, force, and mud seem to be about letting go.

Letting go…of what?

So there seems to be an order to all of this, and the first steps are about surrender and letting go. But letting go of what? 

Our dreams, desires, our safety? I don’t think so.

I think it’s about letting go of our rigidity, our automatic responses, our belief that we know what will happen next. Letting go of the outcomes. Letting go of our impulses and attempts to control things beyond our control. 

Letting go of our plays for control can be tough, especially for many of us raised or stuck in unstable, chaotic, or neglectful environments.

On the one hand, we want to escape; on the other hand, our minds, heart, and bodies seek the familiar even when it isn’t best for us. 

When we’re stuck in the under 200 mud with the eels, most of us find ways to temporarily escape the suffering. Some of us find that escape in alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, working, exercise, over-performing, people-pleasing, stories of the past, our kids. Some of us cope by under-performing, spacing out, withdrawing. And many of us actually get chemically addicted to the drama of stress, worry, and anxiety. 

For those habituated to high levels of internal stress...it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom, and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol. To such persons, stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided. — Dr. Gabor Maté

All of the chemicals of stress and the chemicals created when we temporarily escape from that stress are powerful sources of energy and relief, and we can easily become hooked on them. 

The problem is that we have to separate from our full selves to do it. Only part of us escapes. Maybe our mind can escape for a bit, but our bodies are left in the self-protect mode. 

The trick is to find ways for our full self to feel safe in the present moment.

Since we all suffer from various addictions (some just more socially acceptable than others) when we’ve spent too long in the mud, what can we do with those fixations?

Dr. Gabor Maté says we have to first ask ourselves:

What is the addiction is there for? 

How has it served and helped us? 

When you were small, you may have needed to please your unstable parents to survive. When you were in so much pain, you may have needed the drugs or alcohol or shopping for some relief lest you become overwhelmed by despair. You over-leaning in to your work or kids may help you find value or worth that you are feeling deficient in. 

The question becomes, can you now release that way of coping?

He says you can even thank that addiction for helping you during really difficult times, and let it know you no longer need it to survive.

Given that we are kind of all addicts, the Serenity Prayer comes to mind. 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Interestingly, Reinhold Niebur’s original version of the Serenity Prayer is actually more aligned with Hawkin’s Scale because it asks for courage first, then acceptance:

Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.

So let’s make up our own version informed by what we’ve learned so far:

God, give me the courage to let go of the things I cling to, change the things I can change, accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This prayer more precisely takes us up the emotional frequency scale through the transition stage of surrender toward serenity.

Letting go of…ourself?

For me, letting go of the mud below 200 gives a much better understanding to make sense of verses like Matthew 16:24, where we’re told to “deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.” (Read this post for a great exploration of that verse.) 

Maybe it’s more about denying/letting go of our ego (false/constructed selves), survival-mode, automatic selves.

Over and over, the Bible invites us to give up our old ways and “repent,” which just means to turn around or change the way you think.

What if it actually doesn’t matter so much about where you are on the scale at any given time as much as it matters which direction you are facing on that scale? Are you clinging to anything? Are you stuck?

Whenever we find ourselves plunged into the depths, the trick is to simply let go and let yourself start to rise.

Because here’s the thing: when you let go, you will naturally rise. 

It’s very much like you are out in that bioluminescent lagoon. Sometimes we may cannonball ourselves into the mud with the eels. Sometimes life just seems to push us off into it.

But we have these built-in life jackets. 

We have Love, Joy, Peace, Oneness...all those highest frequency things in us. We can’t separate ourselves from them.

When we’re stuck in the mud it’s because we are holding onto it. Struggling, flapping around, and keeping ourselves in the mud. 

But God says to us, “Be still,” or, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Be still. Stop struggling.

Let the mud settle.

The mud, the eels, the glow on the surface...they are all just there to orient us. They show us which way is up and which way is down. 

But we don’t get to the surface by struggle. We get to the surface by surrender. Release.

Yes, we have the mud and eels in us, too, also inseparable.

In psychology, people call this our Shadow. 

“Your shadow is not dangerous, but denial is. What we don’t own, owns us. Your willingness to be responsible for your actions and learn how to heal yourself is the greatest gift you will ever give to yourself, and it will have a tremendous impact on the world around you. Everyone benefits when you do the work. Release yourself from shame and secrecy and bring self-compassion to the hurt, scared, and vulnerable parts of you that have long been guarded by fear, anger, defensiveness, and self-sabotage.” — Dr. Nicole LePera

Are you seeing it?

You cannot control others. Your only place for transformation is within yourself. And that is enough. 

Now, this may sound really weird, but I want to encourage you to consider doing some kind of physical, embodied act of surrender when you are really feeling in this place. You’ll know what will feel right for you. Build a funeral pyre, get a full body scrub at a great spa, something. 

I stumbled onto this practice by accident, and I (kind of) want to share it with you. A big part of me wants to keep these kinds of moments to myself because it feels sacred for me, and I’d rather not tell the world in many ways. But because of how helpful it’s been for me, I want to share it with you in case it encourages you to find your own way of doing this, too.

Giving up

I was coming to a point in my life where the discomfort of several big things was starting to feel overwhelming. I had been trying and trying to make everything work and hold it all together and push through. All the force kind of things…

I went out to get a little alone time and some Vitamin D (sunshine). I didn’t consciously know about this emotional scale or much of this stuff we’ve been talking about here, but somehow, I just reached this point of...release. 

Somehow (I think because my ego-self was completely exhausted) I let my subconscious kind of take over, and I ended up on top of a remote hill where no one was around, and no one could see me. I’d never done this before, but I felt compelled to take off all my clothes and just lay on the ground on my back with my palms open. 

I thought of the sacrifices made on hilltops in the Bible, and I just thought, 

I give up. I can’t figure this out. I don’t know where good is from here, let alone how to get there. I can’t make any of this happen. I don’t know which way to go, how to fix this, nothing. Your turn, God. My life and all that’s in it is yours. I’m not holding on to any of it anymore. Show me what to do, and I’ll do it. 

Gosh, it sounds like #JesusTakeTheWheel but it didn’t feel like it then. It felt more like Leonard Cohan broken.

Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in.

I laid there for a while. Nothing was written in the sky. No bushes started burning and talking to me. (And fortunately, no drones, small aircraft, or random hikers appeared to see me buck naked on my altar.) But I did feel a distinct sense of relief, release, and peace. 

Eventually, a seemingly random Bible verse reference popped into my head. Matthew 5:8. That was not a normal thing for me to have pop into my head. I looked it up on my phone. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Ok. That’s all I got to go on. ...Or so I thought. 

It turned out that the experience of laying there on my back, palms open in 100% nakedness, surrender, and vulnerability…that body experience and spending the time feeling that feeling, that stuck with me, too.

After that, every night going to bed, every morning waking up, and even during all kinds of bizarre moments in between, I have these kinda unintentional, positive, body-memory flashbacks of that moment. Still! Two years later, now. 

The thought and feeling of surrender is so present with me, in a really profoundly helpful way. I almost can’t help but go to bed and wake up with the thought/feeling. It’s like the opposite of PTSD flashbacks.

At this point, most mornings, I try not to get out of bed until I’ve given myself however long it takes me to really feel the feeling fully.

Some days I wake up with the feeling.

Most days, I wake up, try to remember my dreams, reflect on them, and then my mind starts drifting into things I need to do or feel anxious about. But at some point, without my effort, that bodily feeling of surrender will flash through me. When it does, I’ve learned to grab on to it like a life raft drifting by. 

Some days I have to more intentionally find the feeling, but it’s never too far away.

The trick is to hold it, let it grow, and feel it for at least 15 seconds. And the longer, the better.

Cultivating your mind

Neuroscience tells us that negative thoughts create new neurons nearly instantly and that they are “like velcro,” and they stick to other thoughts really easily. (Remember the negativity bias?)

But for positive thoughts to create new neurons, we have to think them for at least 15 seconds. And these neurons are “like Teflon,” meaning that they don’t attach to other things as easily. 

I think of negative thoughts growing like crazy fast, thorny briar patches and positive thoughts growing slower like big smooth trees. 

I get to create what my internal landscape is like. 

Whenever I can find a positive thought or feeling, I try to hold onto it as long as I can and I imagine this beautiful forest growing in my mind.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, maybe there’s a whole lot to all the embodiment and “incarnational” work of Jesus. Maybe we are co-creators with God in giving us a new mind. Maybe ceremonies and rituals can be a really powerful thing. And if you’re subconscious ever compels you to do something weird like stripping on a hilltop...maybe go with it.

Please don’t surrender your dreams, your safety, or the beautiful things that make you, you, unless you feel totally convinced that is what God is asking you to do.

Give up the things that aren’t really serving you anyway: your coping mechanisms, your false securities, your need to control.

It takes courage to move out of your old ways only because they are familiar. Word on the street is that it actually feels pretty great to get out of the mud.

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Neutrality & Willingness

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