When I first heard the diagnosis “breast cancer,” I was lost in shock and fear. How could this happen in my life? To me?! After a few days, I gradually was able to re-center in the peace within me, to remember that everything that happens in my life is part of a soul plan that I was part of designing before my birth. Nothing is a coincidence, and everything is connected to everything else. I am one soul in one lifetime on one planet. Yet I am also part of the entire fabric of being in the universe. Sometimes it takes loss or crisis in our lives to fully realize this. When things fall away or apart, the long view becomes more visible.

I have learned through personal experience a long time ago, that surrender, and I mean complete and total surrender, is actually the only way to fly. I’ve traveled all over the world and have met people from all walks of life, and have experienced things that are just beyond the mind that I never could have imagined. All in all, my life has been a journey that has been unfolding with this perfection and synchronicity, even in this moment.  

Letting go is how you access freedom. Letting go of your version of life allows you to experience life in its totality. I used to want things, I used to pray for things, I used to believe that things were going to make me happy, and that having things was an answer to something that was feeling inside of me that I didn’t want to feel, until one day, I realized I was praying for all the wrong things.

We spend all of our time intending, praying and envisioning for ourselves, for things we think are going to make a difference in our lives, only to discover that once we get them, they don’t make a difference at all. 

Ganesha is one of the better-known and beloved deities in Hindu teachings: the remover of obstacles, the god of new beginnings as well as wisdom. I have always been fond of his representation with an elephant’s head. When I moved to Florida, I bought a small statue of his likeness to place near our front door. Following tradition, I rubbed his nose lovingly as I passed in or out of the condo. I felt connected to the energy of new beginnings, free of obstacles, trusting that all my dreams about this adventure would unfold perfectly.

Well, Ganesh can be a trickster as well as divine support. He can place obstacles in your path as well as remove them, all in service to your soul’s journey. This little bit of wisdom showed itself again and again as my expectations about sharing my life with a community of friends here manifested only temporarily, and things that had seemed certain began to dissolve all around me. Surrender was repeatedly the only wise response to unexpected change. I discovered that the real obstacles that Ganesh was dedicated to removing were those between me and God. All of them. And this was Ganesh’s wisdom: let go, let God.

“No matter where you are, you feel at home, because that feeling of home is the Divine within you.”

When you are in a state of trust and surrender, you are acknowledging that there is an organizing principle taking care of you. You are accepting the truth that reality is on your side. You are defining your human experience as one in which all that you need will come to you. The more you relax into that receiving, the faster it shows up as a physical manifestation in reality.

Surrender allows you to relinquish your personal will and align with Divine will. Trust naturally arises from within through the gradual surrendering of your individual wants.

Conscious awareness, expanded mindfulness, acceptance, alignment, and harmony are all part of the greater awakening that tells you it’s okay to release your grip. Trust and surrender are whispering to you that you can end your suffering and find peace.

What’s the difference between resignation and surrender? To me, resignation seems to have a hopeless aspect to it, giving up on possibility. Surrender doesn’t have that flavor. It’s more a letting go of control, so that life can bring possibility to you instead of your clutching at it. Yet, perhaps there is more to resignation than first meets the eye. What if you have to go through resignation to get to surrender? What if in resigning yourself to life not turning out the way you thought it would, you let go at such a deep level that complete surrender is at last possible? In expecting nothing, you open the door to everything.

Over the last month or so, I’ve noticed that many different people from many different countries have visited my website to read my 2016 article “Surrender the Outcome.” Day after day, that title keeps popping up in the statistics, from Argentina to Morocco to India. I know it’s a key issue for people in their lives no matter where they live, but I also thought there must be more to it. From the perspective of divine guidance, how much clearer could a message be than the repetition of the words “surrender the outcome” every time I go to my website? The truth is that even though I carry that wisdom within me (and have written about it repeatedly), I often need a reminder when things get challenging in my life. The message to surrender comes when I need it most.

Here’s what I love most about the Law of Attraction: it works! And nearly every day, since 1984, I have more and more proof that it
works.

Now I know many of you have lots of proof that it hasn’t worked for you in the past and that is no reason to give up on it. It’s a delicate process that takes time to master and has “laws” that take time to understand…especially the one about Divine Timing which can be the most frustrating because you can’t have what you want as fast as you say you want it.

There are many ways we approach manifesting a desire.

Some of us take the “if it’s meant to be it will just happen” approach. Others take charge and go into “make it happen” mode.

“The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection and the water has no mind to receive their image.”

That was the first message I got from the first fortune cookie I opened when I returned from India. That seems like a fitting contract for these writings, and perhaps the full implications of that contract will become clear as we continue.

What I’d like to do is to present a model to you, and the specific model is my own life experience. That’s really all I have to offer to you – of my own experiences. I would like to clarify the reason for doing this.  It is not my expectation, or my hope, that any of you necessarily would undergo the particular journey that I am pursuing. I am not proselytizing for Ashtanga yoga.

But we in the West are faced with a very interesting predicament through a variety of circumstances, some of which are built into the culture like changes in communication media and so on. Some of them are the result of the chemicals that have appeared and been widely used – psychedelics.

Where are you spending most of your time—the past, present, or the future?

If you primarily focus on your past or your future, you become a ghost in your present. Living in the NOW is where your real power is. In fact, your brightest future and most peaceful past both hinge on your ability to stay in the present, where you’re connected to your intuition and the Divine.

We live in an age of distraction, future planning, and ruminating about the past. So many of us get caught in a cycle of beating ourselves up about the past or longing for something in the future. When we do quiet the buzzing in our minds, we often encounter media discussions about our economic future or some sort of scrutiny about a government decision from 10 years ago. Even the metaphysical community is wrapped up with what’s going to happen in the future. As a culture, we’re almost allergic to the present!

We humans like to think life can be reduced to a list of tips or suggestions that will keep everything controllable and running smoothly. Social media and marketing promote this illusion with articles and ads that proclaim the “top ten” ways to health, wealth, love, or eternal youth. The truth is that life is not manageable. Relationships can be challenging, checkbooks may not balance, and the most carefully thought-out plans fall through. Is this the end of the world, reason for despair? Absolutely not. If life were predictable and reducible to easy steps for across-the-board success, it would be boring, and we would not grow and evolve.

I find that in this culture, every time I say I have a guru, I feel like I am holding up a red flag to people, because they say, “Well, I wouldn’t want that,” or, “Why don’t I have one?” or something else, so all I’m doing is creating suffering every time I mention it. It’s hard to have something you treasure so much, that you can’t share with people for fear of the impact it’s going to have on them. But I see that what I have to get rid of is my own reactivity to that issue. I am a member of this culture also, strange though it is.

The words that come to mind are that true surrender is no surrender, and the way it was put to me by one of my teachers in the old days, Baba Hari Dass was, “You can’t rip the skin off a snake. When it’s time, the snake sheds its skin.” If it’s a situation where somebody says,“Surrender to me” and you say, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” forget it. It’s not gonna work anyway, because even if you say, “I’m surrendering to you,” that’s ego saying, “I’m surrendering,” which is not surrender. There is a point where your surrender becomes just so obvious and absurd, that you’d be a fool not to – it’s not something where you decide, “I will surrender.”

It’s very interesting that my relationship to my guru is not one that my rational mind shows. In fact, the whole thing was very abhorrent to me in the beginning. When I met Neem Karoli Baba, the whole idea of a Hindu guru was absolutely absurd. I didn’t like Hinduism. It was day-glow paint and calendar art and I didn’t like it, you know… I liked the cleanliness of Buddhism. I mean I was really, you know, a Southern Buddhist. And here I meet my guru, you know, a big fat guy in a blanket, and what the hell is this all about? The fellow I was with was lying down touching the man’s feet and I’m sitting with my arms crossed standing there thinking, “I’m not gonna touch his feet.” You know, I mean, it was just, that symbol of the whole thing, and I wouldn’t do it.

An hour later it was all I wanted to do.

You have been conditioned to attempt to control life, to mold it into shape, to be the master of conditions and to be in charge of your life. So you are constantly trying to fix and change what is in order to assert control to create an outcome. This process arises from fear and lack of trust. You fear that if you lose control life will spin further out of control and all that you have built and struggled to create will disintegrate before your eyes. You fear the future because you have no trust or belief in the fact that life is looking out for you, unfolding and happening for you, for your evolution, for your expansion and for the expansion of your happiness and awakening.

You watch life and see that, when left alone, life falls apart. If you don’t take care of your house, it becomes shabby and derelict. If you don’t take care of your body, it becomes dirty and disease ridden. If you don’t put energy into your business, it goes into bankruptcy. So you assert control and, to some extent, it works.

But if you feel deeper into this idea of control you will see that it reaches beyond giving energy to something in order to make it thrive. It is true that if you give energy to something it will thrive and this is beneficial. It is the attachment to an outcome that creates the problems and suffering.

Most teachers of Spiritual Elevation get to it: Surrender and your life will transform.

But doesn’t Surrender mean Giving Up? ‘Cos that doesn’t sound like something I want to do. For example:

“One path we shall never choose, is the path of surrender, or submission.”  –John F. Kennedy

Or:

“If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.”  —Jesse Jackson

In fact, we’re talking about a different kind of surrender. It’s commonplace to say; but (I have found) it can
be difficult to do. “Let Go, Let God”…”Go with the Flow”…Or:

”All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.” –Blaise Pascal

One of my favourites is: “Don’t Push the River.” That comes from the patriarch of Gestalt psychology, Fritz Perls. One of the reasons I like it is that it “flows” naturally into what for me is the clearest analogy for this, the kayak and the river.

I like having a handy image that explains Surrender, as it’s something I think of a lot.