Understanding Surrender.
The imperative of Kundalini, is surrender. This is sometimes a hard concept to wrap your brain around, because society encourages us to be determined, decisive and have a strong will. To be in control of our lives. Those qualities are useful in non-awakened people, but after awakening they become a real stumbling block unless they are redirected.
I had a really hard time understanding the concept of surrender, I even went to far as to look up surrender and submission in the dictionary and copy the whole definitions out longhand, to get a feel for the meaning of it.
The definition I found the most resonance in, was a term from real estate law. When a part of an estate that has been temporarily leased or deeded is returned to the control of the larger estate, it is said to be surrendered.
That felt right to me. I have had a "lease on life", playing in the illusion of separation and free will, thinking I was in control... and when K. awakens, the lease is up! My life, that I thought was my own, is handed over, given back to Goddess... and She manages it much better than I ever could. If the surrender is of a furnished estate, then in a traditional sense, every animal, chair, and fork will be recorded and documented for the claiming. This delighted me, as it is so like the process of Kundalini. I imagined every decision I'd ever made, any choice or judgment as leaves, and blades of grass, known and numbered by Goddess. Every part of your life that you think is "yours" is counted, and will come up to be surrendered, piece by peace.
In the simplest terms, surrender means "give up." Give up control. Take your hands off the steering wheel of your life, and start letting the smarter, infinite part of yourself make your decisions for you. The first meaning of "give up" is to stop struggling to get your own way. Examine your expectations, and realize that if you did not have expectations then you would not experience disappointment. Expectations take you out of the moment, into dreaming the future... and it is only the Now that is real. Hope itself, is a reflection of fear. We do not look to hope unless we fear the future and want to change it. Hope, takes you our of the Present moment. The past is a memory, and tomorrow never comes. Only the Now, is real.
How often do things turn out like you expect? Probably so seldom that it is a delightful surprise when they do. Investing in expectations, in the hope of getting that rare surprise is as silly as investing in lottery tickets... which around here are nicknamed, "stupidity tax for people who cannot do math."
Learn to set aside expectations and really take each moment as it comes, go with the flow. It may take some practice of mindfulness to really get the hang of surrendering expectations, but the peace and relaxation you will gain is well worth it.
Someone once asked me, if surrender is all that is required for Kundalini, then why do I suggest people practice the Grounding visualization? I explained to him that most people do not know how to surrender, it is something we are never taught. Learning to stay grounded, is learning to get into and stay in a natural state of surrender. Allowing your body energy to flow as it is meant to, before cultural conditioning shut down the flow. You are being fed unconditional love from Source within the Earth Mother, and your mind... your crown chakra is open to guidance from Spirit above. You can hear the heart voice, only if you are grounded. When you are grounded, you are fully in the moment, and not hearing the nagging voices of fear.
Proper grounding = surrender.
Another type of surrender, is renunciation. In the words of the Christ, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." Since God-dess is All that Is, that means give up everything.
Renunciation does not necessarily mean you have to abandon all of your possessions and go become a wandering Monk. It simply means that you have to give up your attachment to things. One way to measure your attachment to something, is to imagine how you would feel if it were lost.
To sever such an attachment you normally do not have to get rid of the physical thing: what is more important is that you hand it over to your Higher Power, mentally and emotionally.
"Goddess, please take this from me, it is a gift for You. It's Yours. Thank you very much. "
(Breathe and distract yourself by thinking of something else.)
You will find that later, when you think again of what has been surrendered, you will see it and relate to it quite differently. Letting go of attachments in this way gives a great sense of freedom. Your stuff no longer owns you!
One aspect of surrender is the transfer of responsibility. Karma follows responsibility, so give responsibility for what Is, to the Divine. As Swami Muktananda wrote:
If you have full faith in God, if you have full faith in the truth that whatever happens to you happens according to the will of God, then every place, every moment, and every event of your life will begin to feel sublime.
One way to accomplish this transfer of responsibility, is by using blame. It would be nice if we could all just release our karma gentle as a sigh, but Kundalini is a fire path and sometimes karma unkinking may make you want to scream and cry and shake your fist at God for making life so God-damn hard!
Go ahead! God-dess won't judge you for it, I guarantee that lightning will not strike you dead. You may find the cathartic release very healing. When other people piss you off and you have no patience for surrender because PMS is making you howl at the full moon, blame God for all of it. Blame the stars, blame astrology if you like... Karma follows responsibility, so making Spirit be the one to blame for all of your problems is an unconventional, but effective way to surrender your karma.
Blaming people, is another story... it is giving your power away, and bombing them with your emotions. Don't go there. You do not have to be a doormat, but remember all that you see is yourself reflected.
Those are types of "passive surrender". There is also what I call, "Active surrender". Using blame and surrendering to the need for cathartic emotional release is getting towards active surrender because it involves following an impulse to action instead of just meditating things away.
As the emotional baggage I call karma is broken down and released from the body, their emotional content is sometimes also released... It is like how when you begin a cleansing program, at first you feel worse because toxins are being stirred up, and you do not feel better until the body has flushed them out. You may find yourself getting upset about things that happened so long ago they were forgotten, till Shakti brought the stored emotional memories to consciousness so you can surrender them.
Repressing the emotions under these conditions is resistance that will make things worse. It is a little like if you have food poisoning and keep swallowing the vomit each time it rises. The body wants the stuff up and out of you for good reason, it is poison and if ego keeps trying to stuff it down again then the body will need to send the message louder and louder till it gets its own way, and that could be messy.
Sorry to be graphic, but this is an important message. What is repressed, comes up ugly, and with the force of the repression added to its size and power. Repression is resistance. Resistance will get your ass kicked, with Kundalini. Kundalini is like getting arrested, you can go quietly, and trust the legal process, or you can get beat up for resisting arrest.
You cannot be stronger than that, and the more you resist releasing your issues and emotional baggage, the more likely it is to end up spattered all over your external results as Goddess keeps turning up the volume to get you to hear. If you want a peaceful process, spend at least 1/2 hour twice a day turning inward, observing your thoughts and feelings, and surrendering whatever comes up. It is your free will decisions that made your ego, and now you must make a free will decision to surrender it, piece by peace by piece... It cannot be dismantled all at once. You would experience great trauma, if it did!
The stuff is just emotions, on their way out. Emotions come and go, but You remain. The more you identify with that eternal self and the less with the transient emotional states, the smoother the emotional release will flow through you. You will be able to observe yourself in an emotional state. Observe your body reacting to emotions, watch the feelings arise and pass away. From the perspective of an inner place of peace and non-attachment that is the Witness.
Sometimes the best way to surrender an emotional state that is simply the side effect of karma on its way out, is to find a safe outlet for the emotion. If you are processing anger, kick an old box or plastic garbage can around an empty parking lot with all your might till you are exhausted, venting your emotion. Get a plastic baseball bat and beat up your bed or couch.
Avoid imagining the box or couch is a person, because you might unconsciously send them the emotion you are releasing. Black magic, like the box is a voodoo doll with their name on it. Blame God, and project God onto the box. God-dess is All that Is, so it is a safe projection!
If you are releasing old grief and sadness, rent some tearjerker videos and have a good cry! Don't wallow in the emotions and make more karma drama out of them, but respect your feelings and allow them an outlet.
Sometimes the ego wants to be sneaky and disguise resistance as surrender. Surrender becomes an avoidance behavior, a way to avoid dealing with what Goddess is rubbing their noses in. That is a game you will not win.
If you surrender something ten times and it still sticks, then most likely Goddess will not take it because She gave it to you in the first place, as a gift. You can identify this stuff because each time you surrender it, it does not go away, but you will get back little hints about what it is for.
Every problem has a gift hidden inside, challenges make us grow. You have to accept the gift with gratitude to see it clearly. Gratitude defuses resistance. Examine it, unwrap it like a birthday present to find the silver linings inside. Often, within the package will be a call to some kind of action. Often it may be a lifestyle change, or a recognition of an ineffective pattern. It is a navigation tool. That is why I call this "active surrender"... you are surrendering to acting as Goddess Wills. Often this means simply observing and following synchronicities.
Active surrender requires discernment. We have all heard the news stories of some whacko said they murdered people because the voice of God in their head told them to... this is an exaggeration, but it happens often in lesser degrees, in spiritual circles. "The road to hell is paved with "good intentions". If your active surrender activity revolves around what you think someone else needs, then you are probably acting from ego.
Spend some time contemplating your selfishness... take a cynical look at yourself and discover what hidden selfish benefit you are getting from the illusion of altruism, and you will uncover the fear that is the true underlying motive. Surrender it, and the motive may go also. Passive surrender and introspection must always come first, and be applied repeatedly before turning to active surrender.
Don't feel bad about your selfishness, instead, learn to keep it front and center. You cannot love until you love yourself, you cannot care for anyone unless you take care of your self, first... take the stone from your own eye before trying to take the sand from your neighbors, yadda yadda. You have to turn inward, and follow your own bliss. Let others live theirs, too... live and let live. On a higher level, you are All that Is, and there is nobody else.
Applying enlightened selfishness and following your own bliss does not mean to be greedy or selfish in a negative way, ignoring how your actions affect other people. Those actions would have karmic results that would not give you long term bliss.
I trust my heart voice first, and externals, second. Synchronicities appearing in my external reality need to be repeated three times before I consider acting on them, because I know a lot of the odd co-incidences of life are just the environment reflecting my thoughts back to me, so I can observe myself and apply passive surrender. See it, recognize that it is myself reflected, let it go. Goddess speaks all the time, through everything... if you are mindful. Don't get paranoid and obsessive about it, though.
Hard to interpret a single synchronicity. Easy to misinterpret it and make erroneous assumptions about where it is leading. Surrender them as they come, and take a closer look if it comes back in a pattern of three. Three synchronicities together will mark a direction, the co-ordinates to a destination in space and time. I will still surrender them and wait to see what comes back, let Goddess put the puzzle pieces together for me and spell it out, before taking action that affects other people.
Eventually, as the surrender process continues and the veil of separation thins, you will more often have the experience of a Zen Master. A knowing that does not require thinking, arising into action with perfection from a silent mind. Then, it is automatic to surrender to the flow of Goddess using you, because You are That. You have surrendered enough to take a leap out of ego and rest awhile in the Self. There is no surrender because your surrender has taken you beyond separation. You are not acting from ego, but from the Self. Your actions will flow, and the results will amaze you later, when you are back in your ego, thinking about it. Surrender your ego desire to pat itself on the back at the results. Enjoy awe and humility. Amazing Grace did it, and you were honored to be the Vessel.
For discernment in being guided by synchronicities when applying active surrender, look for patterns of threes. If a book comes up in conversation with three people I know, who do not know each other, then Goddess is speaking through them to guide me to take a closer look at what that author has to say.
Active surrender, at its best, is a graceful surrender to allowing the body to follow its bliss.Following the thoughts that make your heart feel warm, the "yes" from Spirit comes through the body. An example: My ancestry is British, Welsh, German and French. All cold countries where preparing for winter by squirreling away food is essential as a survival pattern bound deep into the DNA. No longer needed in an age of grocery stores, ... but come fall, my body has an impulse to gather in a harvest of some sorts, and that impulse is very fulfilling to surrender to, in a way I cannot explain.
It is often only a symbolic harvest, but it does not matter. One Fall I gathered a basket of chestnuts that I do not eat, and placed them in a basket with pine cones as a table centerpiece. Every time I looked at them I felt good, my body gave me a sense of fulfillment and bliss. Another year, I may only harvest some seeds to plant the following year... not actual food, but it is the action of harvesting and gathering that is important. A fall ritual that my body needs, to feel fulfilled.
Another time, I kept getting a persistent desire to bake some bread. It was illogical, I do not eat bread. I felt very drawn to enact the whole ritual of bread making, kneading the dough and watching it rise, punching it down and shaping it. So, I did... more as art-ritual than cooking, blessing all ingredients at every stage of the process and braiding the dough into a wreath marked with blessing symbols. My husband said it was delicious. The birds liked it too. Afterwards, I got an insight that a minor health complaint I had wondered about, was caused by an internal Candida yeast overgrowth in my digestive system. I surrendered to honoring yeast, and yeast spoke to tell me what needed to be balanced within me.
This is active surrender, surrendering to the gentle nudges of internal guidance.
