The Great Surrender: Letting Go of Defenses and Trusting Life

...Episode 3 of the "What's Arising Podcast"

In this podcast, I reflect on the present and unavoidable descent of humanity into a "Dark Night of the Soul." On the other side of this dark night is the potential for a great leap in human consciousness - a great light arising from the ashes. However, to actualize this potential, we need to let go of and forgive our old stories of separation. We can each assist humanity in pulling out of the darkness by doing our own inner work by healing our wounds and shining light into our own shadows.

Interested in learning how to surrender? 

• Learn about Shadow Integration Work

Transcript

Welcome to the What’s Arising? podcast.

Before we begin, I invite you to become fully present — present to the conversation, and present to the inner and outer conversation that may be happening within you.

I invite you into what is arising.

To do this, I will ring my Tibetan bowl three times.

With the first ring, I invite you to connect deeply with yourself and with all the inner experience of you in this moment. Become present to your body, your thoughts, your emotions, and whatever is arising within you.

With the second ring, I invite you to reach out with your energy to your ancestors, to humanity as a whole, to your family, friends, country, and all the living connections with other human beings — past, present, and future.

With the third ring, I invite you to become present to what is arising within all that is: your connection to the Earth, the animals, the plants, the solar system, the universe, and the unseen world of spirit, whatever that means for you.

One ring for self.

One for humanity and human relations.

One for all that is.

[Music / Singing Bowl]

What is arising for me today is the idea, or the happening, of the great surrender.

I feel in my bones that we, as human beings, are being invited into a great surrender — to surrender our stories, narratives, wounds, defenses, and old ways of being so that something new can come into our world.

That idea is not new. Many people are sensing that something is arising within humanity: a new leap in evolution, another unfolding of the human experience, another possibility for who we may become.

And yet, these times may not look like that at all.

For many people, these feel like very dark times. I can understand that. We may be in dark times for a while.

We can see this unfolding in war — the war in Israel with Hamas, the war in Ukraine, and many other forms of pressure and chaos. There is social unrest, economic uncertainty, climate change, government control and overreach, drugs, failing institutions, and many other concerns depending on where you are sitting and what you are paying attention to.

There is a lot happening.

There is a lot to shelter ourselves from, react to, or get involved with — either from our emotional story or from a genuine desire to help.

I would say we are in a kind of dark night of the soul.

This is a spiritual expression for a time when someone goes through deep trials, perhaps down to the level of absolute despair. That dark night can last a moment, a day, or many years. I think the length of it depends, in part, on our capacity or willingness to surrender.

If our soul’s deeper movement is toward surrender, and we continue to resist, life may keep pushing us toward the edge. Things may feel worse and worse until something finally lets go.

When we hit rock bottom, some light can enter.

Often, from what I understand and have experienced, it can be a brilliant light that casts out darkness and fear, at least for a while. There can be an experience of freedom, unconditional love, and the capacity to see the world in a completely different way.

There is a change in consciousness.

For an individual, there is a before and an after.

When people awaken, I think it often comes through some kind of dark night. At least, that may be the beginning of the path to spirit, to finding out who we truly are.

Surrender is core.

Surrendering to what wants to unfold, rather than resisting and holding onto the old story.

That is what I feel we are going into as humanity. We are in a pressure cooker. We are in chaos. And perhaps this chaos is inviting us to surrender and accept what wants to arise in human evolution.

What wants to arise is greater freedom.

Letting go of many of our wounds.

Coming back into deeper care for each other.

Moving toward unconditional love.

Realizing that we are all connected.

But how can we do that when we are still holding so much pain? How can we do that when we are unwilling to forgive, unwilling to see how we are complicit in the old story, and unwilling to see how we are holding onto the trauma, shadows, and fears that are creating this experience for ourselves, our communities, and our world?

There is so much to surrender.

All the wounds our ancestors carried. All the wounds built up from the beginning of time. All the pain that has now come to the brink in this moment.

This is the great surrender.

The other day, while thinking about surrender, a question came to my mind:

Why is surrender so hard?

What blocks us from doing the inner work as individuals or as humanity?

What prevents forgiveness?

Why do we hold so tightly to unforgiveness toward ourselves and others, even when that holding is poisoning us, our families, our relationships, and the human experience itself?

Why do we hold on so tightly?

Why is it so hard to surrender?

In the last couple of weeks, I had an interesting experience while working with someone. This person felt deeply unsafe, and that sense of unsafety was arising strongly. I wanted to help him get to the bottom of it.

But there was resistance to going deeply into the core of what the unsafety was about. There was resistance to going directly to the wound and letting go.

What arose was the defender.

The protector.

This part that was keeping him safe from experiencing and feeling all of that.

I felt called to explore the same idea in relationship to myself and the collective energy of humanity: this defender, this protector energy.

As I looked at the defender and what it was protecting me from, I felt the anguish in humanity — the deep fear, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, fear of not surviving, and all the wounds that cause suffering in the human experience.

I saw how the protector helps us hide those wounds and keeps us from going there. It distracts us. It gives us fear. It prevents us from opening the wound because it believes the pain would be too much to bear.

The protector also tries to protect us from the future — from all the unknowns that may unfold.

What if this happens?

What if that happens?

The anxiety comes up about the future. The fear of the unknown. The fear of survival.

In the process, I thanked the protector for its perceived role in protecting me from the wounds of the past and the fears of the future.

I am speaking here also for humanity, perhaps more than myself, because this felt like a collective experience.

I have spent years examining many of the doors and windows I had closed, and opening them again. But this is part of the human task at hand: to surrender our defenses and open the doors and windows once again.

When I checked in with the defender or protector, I noticed it was exhausted.

Absolutely exhausted.

It had so much to do — so many things from the past, so many things in the future. Yet it was only ever meant to protect us in the present.

It was meant to be a warning system that says:

Something does not feel right here.

It was meant to draw our attention to the present moment and help protect us now.

It was never meant to protect us from every possible future, or from processing the past.

So it becomes exhausted. It works overtime. It becomes like an autoimmune response that is out of control, attacking us in order to keep us safe. It becomes like inflammation growing within us as individuals and as a collective.

And because it is not fully exhausted yet, we keep resisting. We keep defending. We keep holding on.

What I saw is that the defender was meant to protect us only in the present moment.

So I relieved it of its impossible responsibilities.

I said:

You do not need to protect me from the past. I need to go there. I need to surrender what is there. I need to open it up, face it, and shine light into those places. That is not your role.

Then I looked at the future and said:

You do not have to protect me from that either. It has not happened yet. There are many possibilities of joy as well as danger. The only place you can really help me is in the present moment.

You can be on my team. You can warn me about what is happening now. But let me take back my fears of the future and my fears of the past.

The future does not exist yet.

The past is no longer here.

Yes, I may be carrying a bag of wounds, shadows, and rejected parts of myself, but I want to re-embrace them. I want to shine light on them. I want to go into them.

Do not protect me from that.

When I did this, the defender part of me felt relaxed and relieved. There was even some joy. It no longer had to carry this expanded role. It had been so exhausted.

Then I looked at surrender.

Could I surrender and move forward?

Could I surrender my story — again, speaking as myself and as part of the collective — and step into trusting life?

Could I know that I am safe right now?

Here and now, in this experience of life, at my core self, my spiritual self, I am safe.

Can I trust that?

Can I see that the unknown does not have to be scary?

I do not have to fear the future.

In that moment, the energy of surrender did not even feel difficult anymore. It felt calm and easy. It was simply stepping into the flow of life and the trust of life.

The challenge with surrender is the defender at the edge.

At that chaotic, difficult edge, on the other side there may be tremendous growth, learning, and joy. But at the edge we think:

What if I go there?

What could happen?

There is fear of going beyond the boundaries and stories of who we think we are into an expanded self.

This is the edge humanity is bumping against.

We have an old story. It is painful and full of suffering. And it may get worse because humanity is still attached to the old story.

Still attached to what others have done to us.

Still attached to victimhood.

Still attached to suffering.

Still afraid of the unknown.

If we let go of all that, if we forgave, if we let our defenses down, if we truly surrendered these energies, would we be safe?

What would happen then?

From my own experience, I can tell you that what happens then is light.

This may feel like a storm right now. A brutal storm.

But light will come.

The sun will arise.

It always arises.

There is always sunshine after the darkness. There is always light, clarity, and joy on the other side of a dark night, unless we resist.

If we continue to resist, if we continue to live inside the story of fear, that is where the danger is.

The danger is not in what might happen if we stop defending ourselves.

The greater danger is what happens if we keep holding on and refuse to surrender.

The wounds poison us.

Unforgiveness poisons us.

We need to let go.

I know how hard that is. I have done ten or more years of deep shadow work with every person I thought needed forgiveness, especially myself. I have worked with every energy I was aware of being in opposition to.

And there will be more. This is an unfolding.

As we become aware of our fears, there is an invitation within that awareness. When we notice a trigger arising, there is an invitation to surrender and let go. To let go of our defenses and melt into what is there.

In the dissolving of those fears, there is light.

There is joy.

Always.

This is where humanity is going.

So what can you do within this?

What can I do?

The best way we can help is to do our own work.

We are part of this collective. Every time one of us does the inner work of surrender, letting go of defense, and working with the core wound, we ease the surrendering process for the consciousness of humanity.

We carry the core wounds of our ancestors, our lifetimes, and our collective humanity. When we do this work ourselves, we cannot help but support the larger field.

So I invite you to do the work with whatever is arising in the darkness of your life.

Whatever looks like suffering.

Whatever looks like victimhood.

Whatever looks like the perpetrator.

Whatever is yours to do in this lifetime.

I invite you to do the work, mostly because on the other side of each of these trials there is joy.

There is happiness.

There is freedom.

I invite you to surrender.

And together, in this individual surrendering, we may ease the pain and suffering of the world.

This is the great collective surrender.

Perhaps humanity is the phoenix rising out of the ashes to become the zenith of human peace and love.

Thank you for listening to this podcast.

I invite you to notice what is arising now.

Continue to notice what is arising, whether it is joy, a trigger, darkness, or something else. These are all wonderful aspects of the human experience, and they are filled with possibility.