David’s Surrender Story
David is a beautiful spirit that I met at the Tampa meditation retreat. We’ve since crossed paths at other events and are members of several long distance meditation groups. David agreed to share part of his personal story and experience of surrender with us. He participates fully 100% in life and is full of love and joy. Being legally blind does not hold David back from experiencing all of life. The Spirit of the Divine radiates from every cell of his being. This brief interview was from March 2019. I’m sure life has continued to unfold and reveal itself to David in new and exciting ways. He may not even recognize himself in this place anymore. This is but a small step on the Eternal, Unlimited, Quantum Life Path.
T: Can you share what your experience or experiences of surrender have been for you?
D: For me it’s changed and shifted and changed and shifted over time. I’ve questioned whether what I was doing was surrendering or not. For me it’s going down to greater and deeper levels inside. It’s really taken shape and come into fruition for me this past December in Cancun at the meditation retreat.
A lot of the times in my past I would come to a place of surrender and it would come from a place of mental exhaustion when the wheels would be spinning constantly. I had an experience in a relationship with someone where my mind wanted things to go one way and life was going in another direction. My mind was doing the mental gymnastics of “you could do this and you could do that.” I felt like I was in it for several days. And anytime my brain was doing what it was doing, I found an inability to actually speak would come forward. I even had an inability to pick up a phone to call anyone. This was the place of mental exhaustion where the body and brain just collapsed because it was going through so much stress and absolute fatigue. This is where a lot of my surrender came from, from bringing myself into mental and physical fatigue through the years. During this particular instance, the inner voice whispered, and you think “who is that, who said that”. And I heard “well you can send an email, you don’t even have to speak, you don’t have to pick up a phone or even say words or go anywhere.” And the fingers moved on the keyboard easily from this place. This was an example of my surrendering in the past.
At the Cancun meditation retreat, the outdoor Surrender exercise was the shift. Knowing that the people and the mat were there, going to catch me, was me Trusting. Knowing I had to say something out loud for the others to respond to and then to have to actually “Let Go”, then having the visceral feeling of literally falling back, of being gently held and the volunteers coming in to say “remember this feeling” was a Huge shift for me. It was the visceral feeling in my body that now I feel in my meditations when I notice the monkey mind come up. I can go through the process of “it’s time to surrender now” and then I get that visceral feeling in my body again which brings me right there to surrender. I immediately go deeper, whether it’s in my meditations or if I’m looking for clarity in an idea. From this place of surrender, I can add other meditative experiences to it, but it starts with the visceral feeling in the body where I can automatically go to it, rather than have to go through utter exhaustion anymore. I’ve got the visceral feeling of letting go. I’ve now let go and I have all these other tools from Dr. Joe, Heart Math, and others that I can tap into to help me access better intuition, to connect with people better and at the same time rejuvenate my body, knowing I don’t have to go to that other draining place that I used to go to.
I had an appointment a month ago, I was able to feel the resistance taking place in me during it, and then I let it go. I could feel the thought “this is too much, don’t let it out, it’s too much, you’ve always been told you are too much, don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve.” And I thought, no, let’s go through the process and then I could feel myself surrendering into it and being me. I’ve also done this with several other powerful patterns that I didn’t even know existed within me, they were in my electromagnetic field from the energy that people, places, and things were putting out around me as an infant/toddler. In a session where I was doing tapping (EFT) with someone I could feel it in the body and then the brain saying this doesn’t make sense, there are no words for this, you have to have words, you have to be able to speak it… and then I surrendered back… It came to me that patterns were set even before I had words and all I would get was the body sensations that came up, all to be released in surrender. This particular time, I let go of a couple of patterns that I learned as a child and that eventually became self-sabotaging patterns. So this was a true gift, to let go and surrender and to allow, to allow it all…
I know this about myself, that not only do I need to know something intellectually, I have to feel it viscerally. If I only have it one way or the other, it doesn’t quite work for me. Which can be both fortunate and unfortunate! It can be extraordinarily challenging at times, both a gift and a challenge.
T: Thank-you, what great awareness of the self! How do you describe the difference between letting go and fully surrendering?
D: When I say “letting go, it’s coming to a place of allowing the mind chatter to stop.” I’ve let go of what’s going on in the brain, of all the thinking and thoughts going on. I let go of that. Surrendering for me is a combination of both letting go of what’s going on with the thoughts as well as allowing the body to go into that visceral feeling of falling back. If I’m just letting go, I may not be paying attention to the body. The body has all of its underlying programs that I am still learning about from a life time…as that is continuing to shift and change, the letting go and surrendering will eventually become the same thing. For right now there is letting go as I’m allowing my mind to go blank and then I go and focus on something that brings me joy. I will even change my thoughts to joy. I may notice the feelings in my body that still may be tight or uncomfortable and then I realize I still have work to do, to let go of that in my body. Surrendering is when I can tap into all aspects of it, the physical, mental and emotional. It’s all degrees.
It’s not just surrendering to giving, it’s surrendering to receiving, to expanding, to being present in the present moment. It’s not surrendering into more wanting, it’s surrendering into more love for myself and then for others, that’s where the healing is, in that electric current of love! I’m also surrendering into the knowing there are a lot of people who know things that I just don’t know and I’m open to hearing and learning and listening.
My final thought on Surrender is that “Being able to surrender is an absolute gift to one’s self!”
Light Channel, Synesthesia Artist
Making the Invisible Visible.
