SURRENDER TO BEING
Resting into ourselves
We all hunger for rest. I’m not talking about the sleeping kind of rest, but rather the kind of rest where we are innerly still, unmoved and present. A rest not into sleep, but into ourselves. Despite this massive hunger we all have and perhaps don’t even know we have, we live lacking satiation. We keep trying to find this rest, yet we never rest. We don’t realize that if we want to experience a resting into ourselves, then we must rest into ourselves. If we want to feel peaceful, present and untouched by all the moving parts of life, then we must spend time being peaceful, present and untouched. While this seems obvious, for most it isn’t obvious at all. We never stop the freight train of thoughts running through our mind for more than a few seconds. Any opportunity we have to be still, we fill up with things to do.
Why are we so adversed to the very thing that we are starving for? We fear missing out, not getting somewhere, not being enough and things not happening that we want to happen. Somehow we think that by doing more stuff, and thinking more thoughts. we will get to peace and presence. We think that the emptiness of stuff means the emptiness of ourselves, and we don’t want to lose our significance, worth, or sense of value and rightness. So instead we just keeping putting stuff on top of ourselves. Ourselves being the rest, the simple sense of being, of existing. Everything that we put on top of ourselves occludes our sight and begins to feel like it weighs us down. Before we know it we feel confused, overwhelmed, heavy and hungry for something more. We try all the things we can think of to fill ourselves up, but they all eventually fail us because we can’t get to ourselves by consuming life, we can only surrender into ourselves.
It’s fascinating that most people find it so challenging to just be, since being is what we all are. To be is our natural state. We are after all human beings, not human doings. Being doesn’t mean inaction, rather it means being rested in ourselves and then following the natural impulses to do this thing or that thing. It’s moving from first being in our natural state of being. There is no force in activity, but rather flow from moment to moment. Once we arrive at being rested in ourselves, it feels so yummy. It is fulfilling, nutritive, abundant and easeful. The discomfort of arriving into resting into ourselves, is the working through all of our resistances, and letting go of all of things that we don’t want to let go of, in order to arrive in the state of simply being.
COMING HOME TO YOU
Prioritizing being
How do you know it’s worth it to let go? The short answer is that you don’t, until you do, that is until you let go. The moment you let go, and let be, you get a taste, a glimpse, a peak at yourself. You may only stay here for 1 or 2 seconds, but for those 2 seconds you get a taste of the freedom and fullness of being. Why don’t we stay? Again the short answer is that you have other priorities rather than being. You prioritize this thing, or that thought, or any of the myriad of a billion infinite things that you can. You simply value noticing other things more than you value noticing your being, or said another way, noticing your actual self.
In some ways you could say it is also a matter of training. Training yourself to pay attention to your actual self. Some might call this disciplining the mind or meditation. Meditation is a state of focus of paying attention to being. To the fact that you are, that you be, and that you can’t not be. You can focus on your mind on things that fill your awareness, but you can’t not be. Being is continuous. You never stop being, even when you aren’t paying attention to the fact that you are being, you still be. While some people might find this boring, it’s simply because they haven’t learned to be present. They haven’t experienced the fullness of themselves. They have only ever experienced the temporary fullness of stuff.
Presence is the opposite of boring. It is alive. It is in the moment. It is full and complete. You never want it to stop or get it over with. In fact you realize that you can’t. You can be done doing certain things or activities, but you can never be done being. Even when you sleep at night you still exist. Nothing stops you from existing, not even physical death of your body, which you realize once you pay more attention to the fact that you be. You exist with and without a body. The more you rest into yourself, you feel the fullness of the moment even when nothing appears to be happening. Boredom, and the fear of lack of anything, slowly disappears from your life. Through this you can stop creating the sense of overwhelm for yourself in order to feel full, significant and purposeful. Your purpose is in the fact that you exist. Because you exist you cannot be without purpose. Purpose is not what you do, it’s that you know yourself to be as you do.
Surrender to the fact that you be. There is nothing else to surrender to. When you surrender, you lose nothing and gain yourself, which is everything. Surrender or letting go is not a loss of anything, it is a resting into yourself. All of our fear to let go is in loss of our significance, or a loss of the things we project our significance onto, yet you are significant by the fact that you be. Notice that you be, and more and more you will know your value, rather than trying to get to it or prove it to others. The more you let go, the more you will see the support and abundance that is all around you, and through this seeing you will let it in. Surrender is a coming home to yourself and a receiving of the fullness of you.
Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor, Boulder, Colorado
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