How are you? I’m doing amazing! I have so much goodness in my life. If you watch my Instagram reels, you know I love ceremony and it’s so healing for me. I have this issue I’ve been wrestling with and I noticed that my mind was really giving me a hard time. I went to the woods and usually that’s such good medicine for me to listen to the trees, meditate with creek and the deer, and it just wasn’t doing it. I saw how my brain was running in circles around itself and chewing on the issue over and over again. It occurred to me that I could do a ceremony for surrender. I could surrender my challenges to the creek and to my guides.
Even before I did the ceremony, I had this palpable feeling of relief in my body and felt like a weight had been removed. My small self didn’t have to “figure out” the problem. I could offer it to the guides and surrender the outcome. Surrender is such a powerful tool. in the yoga sutra’s it’s called Ishvara Pranidhana which basically says that samadhi or a state of bliss is attained by devotion with Ishvara or God/divine.
I’ve always interpreted this as giving everything over to God will remove all those sufferings of the mind we have, or “complete and total surrender to God.” The way I was taught in yoga teacher training was that in the Yoga sutras, it presents all these ways to reach samadhi, all of these things and at the very end it just lays it out. Like you do all that OR you can just totally surrender to the divine. All those years ago I thought, “I’ll just skip to surrender! I’ll just do that! “
When I live in that place of surrender, then I have flow and trust available. I know in my deepest heart, my TRUE SELF (with a capital T), that it’s not mine to figure out. That the divine will support me. That my children are equal to their own experience, and that even if I can’t see it in this moment, everything will work out for the good of all of those concerned (including myself).
Now, it’s not the easiest path and I don’t always practice it; I have to remind myself. I have to bring reminders to the forefront as often as possible. Books, podcasts, courses, audio reminders, post-it notes. Seriously. Sometimes, I forget for years at a time! My human brain needs lots of reminders, and that is totally fine.
Surrender isn’t a completely hands-off approach. I can see that when i offer my challenges to the divine, it doesn’t mean I get to sit back and do nothing. I can release the mental burden of doing things and I know that I will be provided the information I need in order to move forward. Surrender is often in the form of a prayer to the divine. Here’s one from Tosha Silver that I love:
“Please show me your Divine Will in this matter and send a clear sign that gives the proper direction. And if for some reason I’m about to head the wrong way, please, please stop me.”
I love that. The prayer can also be as simple as “Please show me the next step” and I am present and available to receive those messages in whatever way they arrive next. Sometimes it’s that information drops in while I’m walking or in the shower (like it did this morning); sometimes it is a message on a Facebook or Instagram post, or a snippet of a conversation I hear in the grocery store. Robert Moss’ book Sidewalk Oracles uses this as a shamanic divination tool and I love it.
There are so many ways that my guides are always trying to provide information to me if I’m willing. When my critical mind or my ego are present, then the messages get blocked. But when I pause, ASK, and get centered and listen, then I can begin to hear the messages that are coming through.
So how can you practice surrender? You can write down on a piece of paper what you want to offer to the divine and burn it in the fire and set the intention that it is no longer yours. Or you can blow it into a flower and throw it into the creek/lake/ocean. You can also place a small box on your alter or somewhere sacred and write on slips of paper, what you are offering to the divine. Or simply offer with your heart, “Divine I offer this (worry/issue) to you.”- and offer it with complete and utter love.
Surrender is a sacred practice and one that not only allows your mind to rest, but also allows the space for change and for solutions to come thorough. If you mind is filled with worry, there’s no room for love and solutions to appear. If you mind is filled with love, if your mind is filled with this knowing that you can offer it, that you don’t have to do it all yourself, then solutions do appear.
