Surrender

While my language may occasionally have a didactic tone, please rest assured that I don’t know my ass from a dandelion. I offer up these post-long-day & present-late-night ramblings on surrender for Vira Bhava Yoga - who have asked for our stories of surrender. Here’s mine.

Surrender comes first.
Before anything else.
Before anything else can come through, be realized, be born.

Surrender as the emptying of “I” – a hollowing, a hallowing. It is sacrifice. It is devotion and devotee.

Surrender as spinning with the ecstasy and the madness that comes when animate forces devour you. When that which is so much more moves in, through, and around you to make a vast tapestry of our little campfires under the night sky - a tapestry that “I” will never be big enough to see.

Surrender as giving yourself over, leaning back, and allowing yourself to be taken by the shoulders and guided by the well-intended divinities that want to weave world with you. For they are not all well-intended – to know the difference … It is being able to say, “I don’t know” followed by a seeking and finding support. And, no, I don’t mean sitting alone in your insomnia with YouTube gurus as guides.

Surrender as community support. For the past 6 months, I have had “a handler”. Yes, it’s funny. And it’s also true. There are far too many text threads that contain some variation of, “Can we check in? I think I might be insane but …”

Surrender as “who is driving this ship anyway!”
And still going forward, blind folded and terrified doing things you never thought possible, things you’ve never done before, because you know there is no other way – “no choice”. But not in the way your mind knows. This is something else. A warmth, a weaving of love that may leave you with nothing but the love of the weaving.

Surrender cannot be done alone.