To Be Truly Free, Surrender.
By surrender I mean the practice of acceptance, of letting things be as they are, and letting go of the idea of complete control.
Accepting what is, may ironically be the way to freedom.
I don’t think I quite understood that when I was younger, but I have felt the power of it in recent years.
The idea that freedom comes from accepting what is, is a hard concept to reconcile, because in our minds, freedom is the opposite of being bound in any way; it means choice, agency, and having the capacity to do and have what we want, which all seems to be the opposite of simply accepting what is. But as I have dealt more and more with this thing called life, I have realized the more I fight against it, the more stressed and unhappy I become. It is like trying to swim against a current; when caught in a strong undercurrent the trick is to give in to it, swim with it, feel where it is taking you until you can swim at an angle out of it. Swimming against it will leave you exhausted and gasping for air.
Here is where I start to hear your minds resist:
“We cannot just accept everything; we need to fight for and work for the things we want otherwise they won’t happen.”
“No, we decide our destiny and future, you get the future you want by NOT accepting things just as they are.”
“Accepting and surrender are for lazy people, or people who have given up, I’m not giving up. I have the ability to change things.”
Or some version of the above.
And you would be correct. About all of it.
Here is another central tenet I have come to learn as I have gone through this thing called life. The principal of paradox; both things can be true, two seemingly opposing things can be true at the same.
So how does all of this work and exist together? Let’s go back to swimming with the current: you cannot free yourself from the current unless you surrender to it first. It is in surrender and acceptance that we can find our way out. In surrender we let go of control over the things we have no control over. Trying to control what is not controllable is wasted energy. However, in accepting the things we cannot control, we are free to find the places we do have control.
Tara Brach has helped me (and many others) understand surrender better; she teaches us that life goes more smoothly when we allow it to happen. When we don’t accept, we try to control by fighting against reality, clinging to what we want, or trying to avoid what we fear, and all of that creates a constriction within us because we live in flight-fight mode. In fight mode we cannot see broadly or clearly, we have tunnel vision, a myopic view the limits our ability to adapt because we cannot see options. We remain caught in the fight, it becomes exhausting and ironically ends up keeping us stuck just where we are.
We have to accept and surrender to what is true and real and in front of us, to actually give ourselves the freedom to maneuver fully and effectively through this world. It is only in surrendering to the truth of what is that we open up to what can be possible. Surrendering is like a release valve that untethers from the things that hold us back.
A common resistance to the idea of surrender is the belief that acceptance and surrender imply doing nothing. Hopefully it is already becoming clear that surrender does NOT in fact mean doing nothing. We absolutely need to act to move our lives to the better, and we are each responsible for improving our own lives, but surrender is about placing our energy and efforts in the right places.
Surrender and loss:
Let’s take loss for example. No one wants to experience loss and the suffering that comes from loss. When we fight against loss, we try to hold on, we resist letting go of the things that aren’t meant to be, or we avoid facing the loss of things that have already gone. Sometimes we fight loss in our preferring to feel anger instead of the pain behind it, or we remain in denial all together. So much of our energy when it comes to loss is spent in resisting or avoiding. We get lost in it. We get stuck.
So how do we gain freedom from suffering?
Paradoxically, we need to accept suffering.
Glennon Doyle, wrote powerfully about acceptance of suffering in her book “Untamed.” Below are excerpts:
“To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution… pain is the fuel of revolution…as such numbness keeps us from becoming…We have to go straight through our story and feel it all…this is what I must avoid: missing my own evolution because I am too afraid to surrender to the process.”
She adds:
“We have to stay with pain to become – trust you are strong enough to handle the pain that is necessary in the process of becoming.”
It is only through surrendering to what we feel, and feeling it all, knowing we are strong enough to bear it, strong enough to survive it, can we free ourselves to evolve from it and become. If instead we try to protect ourselves and don’t let life touch us, we will not dance with the fuel that enables us to evolve. Surrendering to pain and loss allows us freedom to grow.
Surrender and Happiness:
Again paradoxically, a real acceptance of suffering, can empower us to be happier. How, you ask?
Here is the thing: we cannot avoid pain. Life periodically sucks. That’s just how it is. The ‘suckiness’ of life is not always in our control.
Here is the other thing: We cannot selectively numb, if we try to avoid the bad, we will also be avoiding the good. That bit of wisdom is from my friend Brené Brown (Ok, she does not know me at all, but in my mind we are besties.)
So, as Brené explains, some things will suck…but when we try to avoid hardships, we end up building emotional armor through defensive structures or numbness which means we will not only block out the bad, but we will also block out the good. If, instead, we can become realistic about hardships and accept what sucks, we begin to live in the fullness of the world as it truly is; the good and bad, the ugly and beautiful, the painful and the filling, the sorrow and the joy; that which breaks us and that which helps us become the best of ourselves. But letting in the bad, we also let in the good.
Brené further explains, armor does not allow us to take in all life has to offer, but it doesn’t just constrict our experience, it also constricts our range and options for response. We cannot express our best selves when we live our lives in a defensive posture, clinging, tight, and gasping for air. To live life wholly, we have to be willing to open ourselves to all of it and feel all of it. It is hard to be creative, spontaneous and take risks when we are in a defensive or fight mode. Access to all that is good in us, including joy and freedom, are on the other side of surrender.
Surrendering & Fear of the Negative Spiral:
Ok so say we allow ourselves to feel everything. Say we let in the negative emotions. How do we prevent ourselves from getting stuck there? Having frequented many negative spaces in my life, I can say one of the fears of “going there” is not being able to get out of it. So, what’s the trick? Again, I have found the answer is surrender.
Thich Nhat Hanh, a revered Buddhist monk once said,
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, possessions – we cannot be free.”
Thich Nhat Hahn talks about not CLINGING to emotions. It is human and often even helpful to experience the multitude of emotions our lives bring our way. Emotions are not bad in and of themselves. Emotions are data, they tell us what matters to us, what we value and need. But clinging to emotions keeps us stuck. Simple physiology dictates emotions have a certain shelf-life; they will fade if we don’t work to keep them alive; and the way we keep them alive is by fueling them with narratives and stories. We get attached to these emotions and keep them alive by creating meaning around them, by ruminating about them, or by recreating the events in our minds again and again.
In surrender, we notice what we feel, we become aware of our emotions, we allow them to be, we pass through it, and we let go. We do not cling.
The point is the only way out of negative emotions is through; we can only let go of emotions by allowing them. Tara Brach describes a beautiful method, R.A.I.N, for dealing with painful emotions within oneself (Find a more detailed description here). The first step of R.A.I.N. is to Recognize what you are feeling. The second is to Allow it and give it space to be, a space without judgement. Tara Brach often says the words to herself: “this belongs – I don’t have to like it or stay with it forever, it is just a part of things, a wave in the ocean which will pass”. The third step is to investigate further into the emotion; what does it feel like in your body, and more penetrating, ask yourself “what are you not willing to feel?” This provides a way into fully allowing the experience of your deeper emotions. The final step is to offer yourself nurturance and compassion as a way to hold yourself through that emotion. We can be so good at offering others compassion when we see them in need or in suffering, but if we want to help ourselves move on from the negative in our own lives, giving ourselves compassion offers us the holding space we need to go through it. A question Tara Brach suggests asking oneself in this final step is, “what does this vulnerable place most need?” And then she gives that to herself.
According to Tara Brach, “The two parts of genuine acceptance —seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion—are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird. Together, they enable us to fly and be free.”
Surrender & Growth:
The R.A.I.N. technique is particularly powerful in dealing with parts of ourselves we struggle against. Most of our lives we carry with us a sense of inadequacy, of not being enough. Tara Brach called it the Trance of Unworthiness. Some cling on to negative self-judgement and self-concept because they believe it to be a catalyst for change, that we need to hate ourselves into becoming different. However, we cannot change ourselves or improve ourselves from a foundation of hating ourselves. Self-judgement is like an attack on our being, and as such is another trigger for our flight-fight mechanism which, as discussed earlier, only keeps us constricted with limited access to choice, and therefore freedom. The only way to change is through acceptance and self-compassion. We have to love ourselves into becoming the people we want to be, to access the full capacity of our being.
Carl Rogers famously said,
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
It took me many years to really get this.
A Final Misconception to Clear up:
Let’s deal with a final but fundamental misconception, or perhaps it is more of a bias. As humans we have an “acquisition bias” (ok I’m making up this concept, but I think it is true). We think the things we want in life are things we need to gain or acquire. For example, we see freedom as something that needs to be gained; That it comes from our capacity to create, earn, or achieve the life we want. We have the same concept of happiness; that happiness comes from being able to get and keep certain things, and that if we work hard enough, live life in a certain way, do certain things, we will be happy.
I read something that radically challenged this idea of freedom and happiness for me. According to Charles A. Francis (2021),
“True happiness comes from freedom from suffering, not sensual pleasure.”
The radical idea here is that happiness isn’t about getting something but is instead about NOT getting something. It comes from the LACK of suffering. Perhaps our natural state of being is one of happiness, and we are pulled away from that state when we allow suffering in.
What if freedom is similarly our natural state of being? Perhaps what takes us from this sense of freedom is in fact our desire to control things we cannot control. What if it is our desire to hold on to things that have gone, to change things that are not ours to change, to reject ourselves for who and what we are, that keeps us bound?
What I am saying is this: Notwithstanding real familial, cultural, societal, economic, or physical binds to human freedom, we are born free. However, we grow to falsely believe we become free when we can control the world around us. Perhaps it is our desire to control things we cannot control, that binds us; It keeps us stuck, angry, dejected, hopeless, wanting, suffering. It makes sense then, the only way to true happiness and freedom, is to surrender.
The Ultimate Acceptance: Allow the good.
Sometimes the trouble we have is not accepting the bad, as much as allowing in what is good. Some of us sometimes, are more afraid to let in the good as if expecting only the bad, could save us from the pain of living. As much as we need to flow with the negative parts of life, we also need to allow in the good; the good things around us, the good that happens to us, and especially the positive aspects of ourselves.
While I feel these concepts and ways of being have taken me so much time and living of life to understand, sometimes it is the young amongst us that have the clearest vision; Necotze Johnson who was sick during his young life and died at 12-years-old, said:
“Do all you can, with what you have been given, in the place that you are, with the time that you have.”
That is the way of surrender.
Perhaps as you end your day, you can end with a list of acceptances. Here are mine:
Accept there is currently a feeling (of sadness) within me. It belongs.
Accept my limitations (because of circumstances, age). All life has limits.
Accept impermanence, loss. The other side of loss is having loved.
Accept the new. It can mean growth and opportunity.
Accept my imperfections, my errors, as I continue to try to do better.
Accept my strengths and gifts. I have several.
Accept love around me. I am worthy.
Accept not all will understand or love me. I am still worthy.