surrrender

A word that comes up a lot in spiritual practice is surrender. There's a reason for that word. It's a word that implies something challenging is required. If it weren't challenging, we would use another word, such as trade, or improve, or evolve, or upgrade.

All those words have a positive connotation more or less. The last three especially. They also pertain to what surrender is about. But surrender is the word that best suits the situation, on account of how hard things can be when we reach the need for change.

The need for change often presents itself in our lives as a catastrophe or crisis. Once we accomplish the change, we can look back and understand the catastrophe was not the need for change after all, but our enormous reluctance to permit it.

It is because we try not to change when change is required of us that we suffer. We want to go on as we are, and often do everything we can to pretend that option is available. We cling to it desperately. We hold on for dear life rather than surrender.

But only surrender will work. That's why it comes up so often in spiritual practice. After we have tried everything else other than surrender, it becomes the last option, the incredibly hard response we were trying to avoid, and we give ourselves to it.

Learn to give yourself to it more quickly. Get familiar with the signs that surrender is knocking on your inner door, and let it in. It is not so bad after all. A breath of fresh air. Why was the air stuffy? Well, long before they die our bodies are rotting corpses.