School of Understanding

To surrender is not to resign.

It is a fiercer way to commit. A smarter way to navigate life. The only path to love.

So, I usually make a point of avoiding it altogether. It has incredibly icky side effects. Like driving panic and overwhelming fear. Plus, the manic out-of-control feeling it comes with takes up a LOT of mental space.

Not to mention the faux-zen drama of people who wear it as a badge of courage to mask personal cowardice. However, despite all this, I have been making a conscious effort to befriend surrender and have come to recognize the signs it is real.

True surrender has a kind of weightlessness about it.

There’s a steadfast confidence that everything that can do has been done along with a free-floating faith that regardless of how it all turns out, it will be okay.

It is as if you are trying to grow through a ceiling of concrete and there is no visible sign you will make it through. That’s when i think about this great quote from Leonard Cohen…

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

That’s most definitely NOT to say it’s easy.

Ego fights back, hard. Mine is like a team of sumo wrestling mean girls with death-like guilt grips and dream-slashing trash mouths.

They say things like, let go? what are you a loser quitter? You want to give up? Great. You’ll be poor, ugly, fat, and unpopular. They’re a fun bunch.

Ego says everything will fall apart if you don’t hold it together. And letting go? If you want to insure the worst possible fate imaginable.

To surrender is to let go of results.

To detach from outcome.

So pretty much to totally lose your mind.

This is how it feels during the rather terrifying detaching phase. Sort of like the feeling before you fall asleep that you are falling, totally out of control, likely to die, until you wake up and realize the fear was merely an illusion.

Fear is illusion.

But the feeling is real.

We have been asked to come in for an academic conference next week regarding our son Finn. This left an enormous pit in my stomach. He and we are doing the best we can. It feels like it is never enough.

We are totally exhausted and feel like we’ve failed.

We have friends who, with the nest intentions, have suggested we cut out all extra-curricular activities so we can focus on academics. This sounds like the definition of hell. No music? No art? No sports?

Yikes. So give up the only things he actually enjoys.

Not a chance. I know what I say next will sound ignorant to many but I don’t really care about academics at all. I care more about the balanced health of his spirit, heart, body and mind. And right now we supplement everything not on the brain train.

We are unwillingly to give any of it up and unwilling to accept him losing confidence in his incredible talent and intelligence.

But we do not know the answer.

To surrender to the truth that our unconditional love is all we can offer right now feels irresponsible. Like we are giving up on solving this problem.

Like we have bot been smart enough, not resourceful enough, not creative enough.

And yet, I have let go.

When I pick up Finn from school today, I will simply love him. Not try to fix the afternoon or pick up all the pieces of our broken goals and objectives.

I forget that by gripping too tightly I suffocate the possibility of serendipity, synchronicity and the magical being that is Finn.

That the Universe, God, Love – whatever we want to call it, is conspiring to help us, if we are willing to let it in.