The exquisite pleasures of surrender

If you think about the things we like doing, sex, drugs, art, religion; they’re all forms of surrender. ~ Brian Eno

I feel as if I’m just emerging from some kind of bizarre tunnel.

Since Christmas I haven’t felt like writing blogs at all. I’ve also been afflicted with a most curious disease – I haven’t felt the compulsion to work-too-hard. My workaholism has been taken away from me…

I’ve been seeing my psychotherapy clients and getting on with writing my new novel, but I haven’t been getting sucked into the computer for ten hour days, or losing myself in social media and pretending that it’s ‘work’. I haven’t been desperately seeking more money (we always need just a bit more) to keep us afloat.

This has been most odd. The days are suddenly full of spaces. I’ve been doing more journalling and reading novels and contemplating. On Tuesday we took a whole day off, and yesterday morning we went on a walk on the Malvern hills. In the middle of a work-day! Outrageous!

I’ve been accompanied throughout this time by a background sense of guilt, and occasional financial worry-pangs. Surely we’re going to go bankrupt any moment? Earning a living is meant to be strenuous and all-consuming, isn’t it? It feels like I’ve been in freefall. Arrghh!

As time has gone on, I’ve been trying to practise surrendering. Beginning to shed some outdated beliefs about an intrinsic lack of worth, which means that I have to work extra-hard than others just to keep up/earn enough. Noticing the feelings of guilt or panic, and allowing them to be there. Acknowledging to myself that I am doing enough. I can trust the universe to hold me.

These deep changes in ourselves are usually disconcerting and painful and they take place in their own sweet time. They won’t be hurried. We’re often not sure if we’re going forwards or backwards, or if we’ll ever move from our current stuckness at all. We can feel lost and alone. We usually react during these times by holding on tighter, by trying even harder to control things, and of course this makes it hurt even more.

Surrender. It’s like lying on my back in water. Floating, not freefall. I pass through pain, yes – dukkha is unavoidable – and out into the light. And again. And again. The sun dappling me through trees. Birdsong. Held safe.

It is an exquisite pleasure.

If you’d like a safe place to do your own explorations, join Kaspa or me during March for Eastern Therapeutic Writing or Writing Ourselves Alive. Or start right away with 31 Days.

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Divided by herself by drp with thanks