surfing the semantics of surrender

I’m not sure how much this is solely an American thing or if it is universally, innately part of our nature, but man oh man, we love flash. We want it to be a limited time offer, and we want to be in on the deal.

And I am not excluding myself from this, by any means. As you can see, I like my woo to be all funny, sexed up, downtown, sharp and sassy. The Bhagavad Gita is an enormous, gorgeous wealth of information, but I think I’ve fallen asleep reading it more times than not.

People get very excited about when something is marketed as "special." This little deeksha/blessing thing I have been doing has been every week, Wednesday nights, for four years. Sometimes two people have shown up, sometimes there’ve been 30. Once I had an impromptu, accidental, paint-the-town-red-bender the night before and I woulda paid my checking account balance to not show, and on any mid-summer’s eve I’d be perky and pretty in hot pink lipstick and a strapless floral sundress, but whatever my mood, I'd get there. The consistency of showing up is training from my Ashtanga practice where dedication is venerated more than progress or ability; as my yoga Guruji always said, “Practice and all is coming.”

Although weekly gatherings have been available for years to our NY community, this summer we had a “special” guest in town, and on a moment’s notice, on the July 4th holiday, 30 people found and made the time to cram into a midtown apartment and meet this man… that day some complained they wished there were more opportunities to get together in the city. (Um, there were.) Our tendency is to show up when we think it’s special, rather than with a more boring, unwavering practice.

So this week there was a little conference call with two recently awakened people who are now being shuttled around the country sharing their profound wisdom, ‘cause people want a taste of that. No, that’s inaccurate. They don’t want a taste; they want it all. They want freedom. Sugar, I want it all... Who doesn’t?

In this recent wave of enthusiasm, and a scrambling community hastening to share the sages, there was a last minute online talk available to be watched live one evening of the awakened guests. On the right hand side of the web browser was a simultaneous live chat.

First the talk was delayed, as the speakers had yet to come to screen.

The side bar chat hubbub read something like this:

“I don’t have video? Do you have video?”
“There’s no sound on mine.”
“Who is that person… have they started yet?”
“It says max number of users reached… help!”
“I’m so disappointed, I really wanted to see this.”

Eventually they started streaming and the content was marvelous, but then once again, the poor organizers, not having had ample time to present a seamless transition and despite valiantly trying to do their best, the fritz nevertheless took over.

There were a couple of schools of thought in the sidebar chat that emerged.
My favorite was between a beautiful poet and mother I know in NY and an unidentified other, who began to joke together, “Well, this is apparently the teaching we were supposed to get!” They took it lightly; they were cracking jokes that totes made me LOL. And I’m not by habit, an LOLer.

As they quipped their witticisms, and others identified the problems they were having in varying degrees of frenzy, one person added to the mix:

“Surrender… patience.” And then: “Surrender to the divine.”

Here’s the irony of that virtual exchange. The women joking about the technical difficulties and saying, “Well, this is the way it’s supposed to be…” were the ones surrendering, not the person who was beseeching us to have patience and surrender.

Surrendering is not a bargaining chip. That’s not how it works.

My best friend loves this word: surrender. I have never liked it. I don’t resonate; it’s bitter on my tastebuds. I think of: “you failed” or “we win.” It reminds me of war, or other masculine things that boys should be taking care of with grunting and big sticks. My bestie hearts “surrender” so much, he wanted to get it tattooed backwards on his chest so that when he looked in the mirror, he could see it properly. That’s a lotta love for that word.

I prefer the phrase: “letting go.” Or as the centuries old Buddhist chant ‘Nam-myoho-renghe-kyo’ postulates: I am in rhythm with the rhythm of life.

This is an ongoing discussion in my and bestie’s weekly hours of philosophical debate. As a whole, we cannot dismiss the discrepancy between the words so quickly as semantics, because in this delicate world of tiptoeing toward understanding, interpreting and experiencing the woo, semantics can make all the difference.

The person on the chat wrote: Surrender to the divine. For my money, I just don’t find that helpful. Five years ago I could have easily been infuriated with a “what the f**k does that really mean??” response. My sister is now doing this little thing that I do, and if I said that to her, she’d roll her eyes, get frustrated and go eat nuts in her room. If I said that out loud to a guy, I’d never date again.

In my interpretation, the person on the call was insinuating that if we “surrendered to the divine” that the technology would magically begin to work. (Disclaimer: I will fully cop to the fact that I may be wrong here, perhaps he or she did not intend that, and if he/she did not, apologies, but since this example can be easily used for anyone using this word/practice in this way, as many people do, I’ll dub this debate as valid nonetheless, even if I am wrong in this particular instance…)

The moment we use surrender as a bargaining chip, it is beside the point. Surrendering to the divine is just surrender to reality, surrendering to the present moment. Not changing the situation, accepting the situation and changing our perception of it. We let go of things, opinions, our stance on things, not so that we can acquire them, but so that we can do just that: LET GO and let them be what they are. Find the peace in the moment with what is actually there, not a fantasy of what we want it to look like.

Now, the catch 22 about surrendering or letting go is that once we really, really do this, is when something comes toward us.

There’s a guy that I used to be hung up on, and I swear to all things holy that he had some kind of internal GPS tracking system linked to me that would activate whenever I fully turned my back. He'd vanish from the chitta vritti of my mind, perhaps facilitated by my having met someone else, or being fully enthralled with another flourishing aspect of my life, and just when I had absolutely let go of any connection to him, he’d resurface out of the woodwork looking for me. Every time. It was laughable it happened so often and with such precise honing. On some plane, that I would never be able to pinpoint, someplace it was not even cognizant to him, he could feel my energy was gone, and he, in turn, being a guy, would want it back and would return, all sweet and wanting.

Doesn’t this apply to so many aspects of our lives? The thing is, with the guy, whenever I would do “work” to let go, it wouldn’t hold water. Until I really, truly let go of expecting any outcome is only when he’d show up.

On the call, surrendering was identifying the reality of the situation. Technical difficulties are here, and so, ok cool—love you all, happy holidays, a sign off, and we’ll all get a recorded YouTube clip emailed to us within the coming days.

Letting go is a major practice in these overarching ambitions towards awakening. Surrendering is allowing ourselves to surf the tide that is life and changing our perception is the sex wax that greases it to happen. The non-dualists would say it is already done. The Buddhists approach it from a different way and teach to welcome everything—to find the stillness within, no matter how rough the tide.

Tattoo it on your chest or take it as it comes; no one said it was easy, but it is simple, so we can at the very least try, and if we can try laughing, and with wetsuits?... well, gee, I think that's more fun.