I chose this topic because this word keeps coming up in my life and I wondered if it is in yours too, overtly or covertly. I looked the word up, of course. Surrender means giving up power, control, or possession of something, usually under duress or demand. How did it come to me? I can admit that I generally don’t like giving up, giving up control of my life. But it seems to me more and more that it helps me to know when to keep fighting and when giving up is smarter, more beautiful and sometimes the best way to get what you really want.
When things just want to stick
Let’s start with cooking plates. I always use the baking pans, but I pay attention to the problem of covering them. This time I tried one with a ceramic surface given its great reviews. I expect the food in the non-stick pots to stick when they are finished, usually in a year or two. It stuck after three months. I have written a complaint to the company but have not received a reply. So, for some strange reason, I gave it up and bought another one of the same type. This time I wanted to treat it very well.
Same story: After about three months, it started to stick when I was frying eggs or tofu, the very things I want a non-stick pan for. I had to ask myself if I could use it but more carefully. I tried using a little more oil, keeping the heat lower and moving the contents around. It works. I feel like I’ve kind of given in to the need for cheese and it’s giving me back what I want.
When parts of me want to age
I understand that aging is also about trying to figure out when to fight and when to give up. Doctors certainly do not give up. It seems that I spend more time with them and talk about the struggle of one or the other. I do my best to stay fit and strong, but as I get older I seem to have less energy and more problems. The increasing amount of time I spend on health stuff shows that I will lose out in the long run. Is this called death? I agree.
No, nothing is like death now. But, for example, for the past few years I’ve had pain in my right side, near my spine. The MRI says my lower spine has degenerated. This is common and usually due to aging. To reduce the pain, I just sleep on my left side, but the pain often comes every few hours, so I get up and do things that stop me for another few hours. My spine doctor tried different taps and nerve ablations. Not much helps permanently. Long walks and swimming are how I fit in, but they hurt more at night. I think more in terms of “just living with it for the rest of my life”. I think that’s called surrender.
When something wants to hit me in the head
A slightly more difficult issue is that for the third time I developed what is called pulsatile tinnitus. You can hear your pulse or the beating of your blood vessels in your ear. It only bothers me when I’m meditating, but it’s “only” important to me. The first time I took it was in 2016 on the “pilgrimage” I talked about. Spirituality through a highly sensitive lens. For six months we traveled across North America and Europe, staying a month in each place and spending a week of it in overtime. meditation. The second month, while hiking in a national park in Sweden, I stubbed both toes and fell hard, face down, knocking out two of my front teeth.
While fixing it, a Swiss dentist left the gadget in my mouth for a long time, which later produced a pulsating sound. Considering the importance of meditation on this trip, this constant loud banging in my head made me very sad. It seemed impossible to go silent. Every thought was a struggle instead of being powerless. But good things happened. After a few months in France I found an osteopath who treated it.
Maybe he came back after five years. This time, there was a clinic in San Francisco that tried to treat it. First, they needed to know the cause, so they did an MRI. The Friday night before Memorial Day weekend, I was told by the radiologist who read my MRIs that I had a “disconnected carotid artery” and needed to go to the emergency room immediately.
Well, don’t follow me, but I’m not gone. I knew that meant being up most of the night and I knew right away that there was nothing wrong with me. In fact, over the years, they describe this carotid artery and it becomes more and more “exploded”. But that MRI ended the treatment plan because they suspected that the dissection was the cause of the pulsatile tinnitus and that it couldn’t be easily treated.
Important spiritual readings
So I had to give up. I got better at dealing with the noise, used white noise to silence it, and much later – I don’t even know when – it stopped. I guess giving up worked.
This third time, I contacted that clinic again and started getting MRIs. Nowadays they say that it is necessary to understand the reason. So we’ll have another look, although I have little faith that they can cure it. But this third time I completely surrender to it because this is the next way that surrender entered my life.
When I think I am not really my body/mind
I’m always interested in new ways of looking at awakening or enlightenment, even though my latest book on the subject is out now and won’t be updated. The last thought I’ve come across (check out awakeningworld.net if you’re curious) is that the “witness” who always attends the awakening can come into being in stages. First, you will notice more and more silent and unlimited notifications. I will write about this in a future blog. In the final stage, you identify with this infinite silent awareness as your true Self, so that this Self witnesses the mind, body, emotions and everything else in the world. So, in a way, the small self or ego surrenders to the unlimited Self. As they say: “I am, you are, this is all”. Pulsating tinnitus is also This. This perspective really allows you to surrender to that beat inside the head. (Although I still let the doctors figure out the cause and treat it.)
When You Surrender?
So think about where you need to give up or even want to give up. I think it’s a part of life, but it can especially appear on the spiritual path. Just be careful not to surrender to someone like a spiritual teacher or group. Surrender to a higher goal and believe that you will achieve it with the help of a higher helper.
