Surrender

Do you want to know how it feels when you surrender yourself completely and fully commit to something? There is an indescribable sense of peace and calm, as you focus on that one particular area. This could be your work, ambition, goals, spiritual journey or wanting to find yourself.

The key is to surrender.

And, that’s tough. How do you go about surrendering unconditionally when your brain is buzzing with thousands of questions?

Years ago, one of my mentors had told me that it would take me more time to find myself as compared to other people, as I was too full of questions and unless I surrendered completely I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. I didn’t understand him then, but over the years I realized what he meant. Often our intellectual mind clouds our vision and we can’t even perceive a simple fact without trying to dissect it with numerous theories. We don’t jump, we just sit on the edge and keep looking at the water, analyzing and re-analyzing, while a simple person may take a plunge without a thought and enjoy the cool water.

Do you believe in messages? Sometimes when you are sad or de-motivated or confused, do you get messages – could be a social media post, an unexpected phone call or even a random statement by a stranger – relevant to that particular situation? Do you shrug it off as co-incidence or label it with some scientific theory or does that make you pause, even if for a few seconds?

There are no co-incidences in life. I believe that. There is a cause and effect. Though I believed that, it took me time to surrender to it.

Some years ago when someone told me that she had to relay a message to me from someone, I was sceptical, partly because I didn’t trust the intent of this messenger. It was a simple line. I was to be told – “She will gain everything only after she loses everything.”

It was like a warning for the things that were to follow. Despite that, I was not prepared. I was too sure of myself. I could have never failed. Surely, I failed. I lost everything. I was at ground zero, sitting atop the wreckage of my own life.

While the fall didn’t hurt much, rebuilding myself inch-by-inch, painstakingly shedding each layer, de-learning and de-conditioning every day were the major challenges. Some days, I could run a marathon and some days, it was even tough to get out of the bed.

For years, I had read theories and philosophies on finding oneself. I had talked about it as if I knew what I was saying. I realized I was full of myself. Nothing prepared me for this – the excruciating pain. It literally ripped my soul out of my body. 

It wasn’t magic. It surely wasn’t overnight.

It took years to rebuild myself, to slowly and steadily start gaining the things that I had lost. The process is ongoing. I am still gaining something every now and then. Difference is, now I value each one of them.

And yes, I have surrendered to the process. That’s the only way to truly find yourself.