surrender

contemplating faith, humanity and the divine force that moves the universe, illustrated through the language of water.

The Raindrop
Tiny Droplets of Love

Recently I have been considering what faith means to me. In Marianne Williamson’s book ‘A Return to Love’ she defines faith as trusting in the force that moves the universe.

She speaks of how a seed turns into a flower, an embryo into a baby and how the planets revolve around the sun. All of this happens, almost like magic, with no human effort or interference.

The universe is always moving and unfolding. Trees grow to soaring heights, the moon pulls the tides of water higher and lower, our hair gets longer, lungs fill with air and then let go again.

There is a universal system, a divine movement. Faith is remembering that we are nature and we are part of the cosmos. It is trusting in the divine force that moves the universe.

This is the closest definition I have found to how I feel when connected, when in meditation, when I feel devotion within my heart.

To me this feels like a softening, a relaxing into the idea that things will be okay. That we don’t need to control every single moment or every single outcome of our lives.

It’s thinking ‘Wow, it’s raining. How beautiful,’ even when you were just about to go for a picnic.

What holds so much beauty also is that when we forget, when we have doubt, all we have to do is look out at nature. Look up to the sky, feel the breath moving in our bodies and we remember again.

When I think of a flower unfurling from a seed, or a baby growing up, I see that it happens miraculously, however humans do help this process. We can tend to a plant, we show love to the children in our lives to help them develop.

As humans we provide nurturance. It makes me wonder if maybe the purpose of our humanness isn’t to control, to dominate, but rather to be in service of love. To tend, to nurture, to cultivate.

Just as the clouds release rain that nourishes most living beings on this planet, maybe humans are made to be little tiny droplets of love.

If you look to most indigenous cultures around the world, this is what they practice. To the aboriginal people right here in so called Australia, this is their worldview.

They are the custodians of the land. They do not take ownership of the land, they do not dominate, but rather they care for the land, tend to it, protect it and live in reciprocity with it. Humans are co-creators with the universe.

If you look to non-dual, Eastern religions and spiritualities, the primary teaching is that we are not seperate from each other, the earth or divinity.

Maybe our service as humans is to sprinkle little tiny droplets of love and divinity that are always there within us, flowing through the rivers of our being.

The River
Fluidity as a Balm

Surrendering to faith, practicing deep rest, releasing the need to control everything is difficult to talk about without acknowledging that we live in a society that values productivity and unsustainable, endless growth. That the structure around us has been developed under capitalism rather than reciprocity.

The concept of fluidity as a balm, as a way to disrupt productivity was introduced to me by one of my teachers, jo buick.

It’s the idea that we can find the element of water in our bodies, in our being. That we can find micro-moments of rest within a system that doesn’t care if we burn out. That fluidity gives memory to the non-linear, water like movement that is always looking to emerge from within us.

It is radical to listen to the stirrings of our souls. To release control and allow our lives to ripple out in a mysterious but magical way.

To lay back and float with the river, allowing it to take us where we are supposed to be. To feel emotions as they arise, instead of pushing them aside for another day or a more convenient time.

It feels like we have forgotten that we are human, always flowing, moving, feeling. Never the same on two different days.

What would it be like if we surrendered to the fluidity of our nature? If we danced with the flow of divinity? If we let ourselves rest, let ourselves cry? If we listened to the seashell of our hearts, that’s always whispering to us the songs from the depths of our waters?

What if that was the balm our innermost selves need the most? So go for the swim, dance with no choreography, splash water on your face, take a break. There is such relief when we stop resisting who we are.

 ~poetic interlude~
 cry

it’s okay
let the wave of water swell
i will swim in the pools
at the bottom of your eyes

i know it’s scary
to topple over the waterfall
but my love, the clouds in your mind
can only hold so much 

your muscles don’t always 
need to be tense
even the sky gets softer 
at the end of each day 

please don’t stop your tears
from returning to the ocean
one day i will drink 
the sadness that leaks from your heart

there’s no need to hide darling
like any lake, you are a body of water
i will stay through the flood
because it’s my water too

The Estuary
Bodies of Water

We are bodies of water, we ebb and we flow. We move like a river and leak tears when we are moved.

The mind moves at the speed of light, whereas the body moves at the speed of water. What if we allowed our minds to slow down to the pace of our bodies?

What if we were here right now, in the embodied state of water? Because I see tumble stones stacked to make a waterfall of your spine. Nerve pathways like rivers and streams that become the waterways of your body.

During the winter of last year, I was meditating by a small lake. The water was so still it became a mirror. Without looking up, I could see the sky, I could see the gum trees swaying in the wind.

It reminded me that maybe the stillness we practice when we sit, when we go inside the internal landscape of ourselves, is to still the waters long enough to see the reflection of our true nature. Maybe surrendering, is really just remembering.

The Waves
This Oceanic Dance

I spend a lot of time in the ocean, and the waves have taught me many lessons.

Some waves are best to dive under, some it’s better to jump over the top. Some pick you up to joyful heights, and then some crash you back to the sand below.

Sometimes waves will be smooth, swelling and passing you by gently. Others are rough and the water tumbles and rushes over your whole body.

Some waves I have dived under peacefully, only to resurface and have another one immediately and unexpectedly hit me in the face. The salty water forcing its way down my nose and throat, into my lungs, leaving me choking and gasping for air.

Some waves have cradled me softly as I float, perfectly content. Some will be so chaotic that it will flip me and toss me around. I will resurface, completely disorientated and unsure how I ended up where I am.

Sometimes if you time it well though, the wave will pick you up and then hold you. It will carry you with it in perfect synchronicity and it’s electric. The gorgeous blue water, spraying and catching the sunlight, creating a glimpse of a rainbow, as you surf it back to shore.

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching hundreds of children how to swim over the past decade. When it comes to respecting the water, ensuring survival and harmony with this gentle but powerful element, the main concept I teach my students, is to never panic.

Move with the water, not against it. Relax, each wave in the ocean builds, crashes and passes. Each riptide only carries water to the back of the break.

The movement of creation is wave motion. It moves around us and within us. Listen to the beating of your heart, feel the rise and fall of your breath, life is an oceanic dance.

When it comes to the waves of life, I think the advice I give to my students is also quite useful. Don’t resist. Allow the waves to pass over you, pass through you. Don’t attach.

These waves of thoughts, emotion, circumstances; they are not us. We are not the waves, we are the ocean.

The Ocean
Surrender & Loving-Resistance

So does surrender mean we surrender the internal processes that filter our decisions through a moral compass? How can we  surrender when 10,000 children have been killed in Palestine within 100 days? All these questions, and more, surfaced for me as I have been contemplating surrender and faith.

With my curiosity and eagerness to learn, I read a book about a spiritual man, who decided to experiment in his life with totally surrendering. He decided to surrender to whichever opportunities presented themselves to him, regardless of his own preferences or dislikes.

The premise was beautiful and the beginning of the book inspiring. By the end of the text however, I was disappointed.

I had read another of this author’s books before and adored it, yet this one felt like a humble brag of what it’s like to be a white man, with a fully funded higher education, a father who worked on Wall Street and the equivalent of what would be $100,000 today in his bank account when he started his adult life.

It didn’t feel as though I was witnessing the loving outcomes of a life surrendering to the divine force that moves the universe. It felt like I watching a man slowly surrender to the forces of capitalism and claiming that it was spiritual because he wore a ponytail and sandals instead of a suit.

I realised I had just read the story of how easy life is when you are privileged. The story of success equals a billion dollar company and the acquisition of land.

I’m glad I read his story though, because it illustrated to me, that faith isn’t surrendering to the force of oppression, the force of hatred, the force of human fear and greed.

For me, the divine force is what moves the clouds, not what launches missiles at innocent babies. It is the reciprocity of the trees and our bodies, not the accumulation of billions of dollars into the hands of a few.

If humans are co-creators of the universe, then I believe that we should create with love. Loving-resistance is needed in a world that encourages us to be hyper-individual and where many wouldn’t give morality a second thought.

Love would ask us to consider our community, our planet and ourselves. Surrender isn’t about rejecting ourselves or our moral compass, it’s about connecting to the force inside us that is more powerful than fear.

I feel it within me, I see it around me in the people who stand up against injustice, in the waters that move on this Earth. The water that is soft but strong, flowing and then finding stillness again.

In the short few weeks that I have been practicing surrender, I haven’t received an offer to my dream job or a cheque for a million dollars.

I have felt softer though. I have noticed beauty while practicing yoga in the garden and watching the way the sunlight and the trees create shifts of light and shadow on the ground.

  I have remembered how far I have come just as often as I have dreamed for what is to come next. I have let go of unhealthy attachments to people, knowing that whatever is meant for me, will never pass me by.

I have welcomed sadness and anger to move through me instead of drag me down. I have felt an appreciation for the place I live, even though I’m longing to leave, because I’m here now.

Not much has changed around me, yet everything feels softer, cooler, like fresh water soothing me. Surrender has helped me change how I feel on the inside, and to me that is a miracle.