I can now reach the surrendered state when I sit and meditate, or at anytime really. But as soon as I go about my day with work, chores, interacting with other people, I tend to forget to remain in that state. So I started writing notes with the text “SURRENDER!” on them and placing around my house and studio, just a reminders to myself.
This is my template note that I print out.
I you, like me, have use of this reminder, feel free to download this file and print it and put in your house or wherever suitable. This is a non-commercial usage right.
We first need to accept reality (the world, ourselves, our bodies, our feelings, etc) exactly as they are. Only from that state can effective action be taken. We constantly try to resist our emotions, our pains, our reality. This resistance takes up a lot of our energy. In the fully equanimous state, there is no resistance, and much energy is made available.
I like to use word surrender for full acceptance or full equanimity. I like the word because it is a bit provocative. I also felt resistance to it initially. The word has religious connotations, to surrender to a god. This also makes it provocative to some, and attractive to some. And people think of surrendering in wars. Either way it usually produces strong emotions. Things that cause strong emotions are easier to remember.
The reason to surrender is to end suffering, and the only way to end suffering is to surrender.
In a specific meaning of surrender you simply have no other option. Surrender to your feelings, thoughts, pains, regrets, inabilities, shame, happiness, bliss. Surrender to your life as it is now, to the world as it is now. This is a deep acceptance, a deep relaxation. The Buddhist term is equanimity. Stop fighting how you feel, just feel it. Stop fighting how you feel about the world, just feel it. You cannot really control anyone, anything, not even yourself. See this on the deepest level and experience the bliss of real surrender.
From that position only can you try to align your actions to lead to positive development of your psyche and via that affect the world, but you will realize the futility of this. Psyche is karma (cause and effect), pure dependent origination like all other things. What are you? Your psyche? That is a common definition. Another is that you are the observer of the psyche.
The observer is already surrendered. Only the psyche fights reality and causes suffering. The observer observes suffering but does not suffer, the psyche suffers.
When the psyche fully surrenders, it stops suffering. One way to look at it is that it becomes the observer. There is only curiosity, love and bliss. But even that goes away and what remains is pretty much nothing. Very few reach this stage. I have not. The Buddha is said to have reached, and some others. They realized they were not their psyche. The psyche, the personality, the form, still exists. But they could see it was not really them. This was done through full surrender. The psyche surrenders. There are techniques to bring the psyche to surrender. The surrendered psyche is much more powerful in affecting the world positively so that other psyches may surrender too. But the observer has no such intention or will. It is quite mysterious. Does it want anything but to observe? Does it want us to suffer less? Does it want to improve the world? What is it exactly? Does it even exist? Is existence a meaningful word when talking about the observer? What is existence?
All these questions are apt. But the observer cannot answer them, they are made of words and rationality. The observer cannot help with that. The psyche can answer them but it will most likely be wrong. Some question cannot be answered.
I am by the way a total fool, so you should not believe anything I say. Make your own assessment. But I can assure you that this message comes from love and my will to improve the world.
REMEMBER SURRENDER!
