When I was a teenager, I used to attend a Christian church whose pastor, an intelligent and genuine man, had a lot of practical wisdom to share. His favorite line was “throw it onto Jesus.” What he meant was — whatever unbearable burdens, unsolvable problems, impossible situations you have — give them up.
Years later, and no longer a Christian, I still hold on to that piece of advise. I believe learning about surrender early on in life got me through the most of it — early loss of a parent, having to provide for myself since the age of 16, moving homes and countries, leaning quite a few new languages, revolutions and air raid sirens, career changes and a whole host of other things life has a tendency to generously throw at all of us.
But I am still learning surrender. The practice that is meant to make our lives as joyful and easy as possible is actually the hardest thing in the world.
Let me make this clear. Surrender has nothing to do with being passive or abdicating responsibility. We may sometimes convince ourselves that we are surrendered when we don’t want to deal with our pain, or when we don’t want to take on responsibility, but that’s not what surrender is. Surrender means getting out of our own way.
Surrender means acknowledging that I cannot pull myself up by my bootstraps. That I don’t have a plan. That I can’t fix this. Surrender means relinquishing control.
It has nothing to do with self-diminishment or self-deprecation. These things come from the ego, which tends to project our wounding onto the outside world. Surrender is an invitation to connect to our soul self, our Higher Self. But it’s not easy.
The more disempowered we feel, the more we are inclined to try and control every minute detail of our lives, to try and outsmart the universe. It doesn’t work, but inevitably leads to anxiety, depression, restlessness and pain. Paradoxically, we are only creating more of what we want to avoid — further loss of control.
The ego wants to control. The ego wants to know, to have all the answers. The ego wants to make sure we will have a pension plan 40 years from now, that the restaurant we will have our dinner in on day 2 of a holiday 6 months ahead from now will not be overbooked, that our partner will not leave us, that there will be enough money to pay the bills, that we know what to do with our lives. That the future is predictable, manageable, safe.
12-step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, have tapped into this timeless wisdom. The only way out is by giving up the overwhelm to the universe, by acknowledging that the ego has no power of its own. Instead, we let the universe carry our burdens, clear out our basement, and fill us up with light.
Or, like my old pastor used to say — throw it onto Jesus. It’s not about Jesus — the principle works no matter what you call it.
When you feel everything is too much, when you feel you can’t bear it anymore — let it go. Surrender it to the universe. Prostrate yourself on the floor and say, yell if you must, “I can’t bear it anymore, take it from me!” Become a little child standing at the gateways of Heaven, a little child who lives in Trust — for the Kingdom belongs to such as these…
