Repeating ‘Thou, Thou,’ I became Thou in me, no ‘I’ remained.
—The Mundaka Upanishad
Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise.
—The Lankavatara Sutra
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?
—Rabindranath Tagore
Several traditions equate surrender with renunciation. This is an appropriate way to look at surrender as long as renunciation isn’t seen as a denial of anything. Denial, after all, is merely an egoic avoidance. Another mistake occurs when surrender is interpreted to mean “giving in.” In fact, giving in is just the opposite of fully meeting whatever the present moment is offering. Unlike authentic surrender, giving in means that we create an attachment to something other than what is being offered in our experience. Giving in runs away, while true surrender stays put, opening itself to exactly what is happening without moving an inch.
Consider a difficult exchange with the person to whom you are closest. Let’s say that the communication is filled with negative emotion. Your body feels almost hot, and resistance pervades your experience. It is a real battle, where the other person is being unreasonable—at least in your view. Giving in to the other person would mean you decide that, in order to preserve the peace, you will let him have what he wants. You will offer him what he has asked for even though it means that you will be making, let’s say, an unjust sacrifice. But you’ll do it in order to be a good person, or a good spiritual being. “It is the compassionate thing,” you say to yourself, “to surrender to the needs of others.” Unfortunately, this action is neither compassionate nor supportive of the other person since your giving in exacerbates his unconsciousness as well as your own.
There is tremendous confusion around this topic. Being clear about it, however, can easily set us up for an authentic Awakening. The script that most of us cling to on this topic is the one that attaches the idea of surrender to a white flag being waved by a battle-worn individual or group. The definition from an Awakened perspective, however, implies a letting go of the battle and of its participants. In other words, surrender, in the spiritual sense, means a letting go of all things in order to participate more fully with all things.
In our example, real surrender to the conflict with the person we’re closest to might involve standing firmly, peacefully, and lovingly in our place while not giving in. For that matter, real surrender might also involve walking away from the whole conflict. Regardless, surrender is a way to open to the totality of any situation we might face. Despite our adversary’s protests, we get intimate with his feelings as well as our own, with his words as well as our own, with his attachments as well as our own. In doing this we open ourselves, and from that open space we can offer responses that make all parties more conscious.
Really letting go, or authentically surrendering, only occurs when there is full release into the present moment. The instant that there is the slightest grasp of any script, opinion, or other mental construct of either past or future, there will be an opportunity for ego to offer its resistance. Once this happens, we erroneously avoid what’s happening by succumbing to our habitual tendencies, instead of fearlessly surrendering deeply into the present moment and whatever it might bring.
