Surrender

The word "surrender" is thrown around fairly often in both the BDSM lifestyle and in a number of religious faiths. There are classes you can take in the community on how surrender should look if you're a submissive or slave, and classes you can take from churches on what surrender to the holy spirit should look like.

They often make is seem like it's just something that you do, like taking off a shirt that's been too constricting. You give your personal volition over to a Master (who by definition is not you)and suddenly you are overtaken by a feeling of elation and relief from the weights that burdened you prior to this miraculous occurrence.

The problem is, if one has a well developed (or overly developed) sense of personal will, this can be nearly impossible.

I struggle with the notion of both fronts. Perhaps when I was younger I felt like I could not count on the people who were supposed to be there for me to fulfill my needs. I learned that I had to be responsible for getting what I needed, and later on in life, I learned that I had to know what I needed and be able to communicate that to the people in my life. I had to be my own advocate in my healthcare. I needed to be the driving force behind projects to get things done. I developed a desire to be in charge when I was worried that things wouldn't get done right if I wasn't doing them or in charge of seeing them being done by others.

This actually hasn't worked out too badly, though I have come to realize that my own work always requires the help of other wonderful people to truly be complete.

But when it comes to giving over my needs to someone else, I have a bitch of a time. I have a really difficult time believing that a Master would know what I needed more than I would and then would actually try to make that happen. I don't know that I could just "go along" with some course of action that I really thought was wrong if my Master (after hearing my opinions on the matter) decided to take that course anyway.

On the universal side of things, perhaps it is a little easier for me to contemplate surrender, as I have a much clearer notion of the perfection of the universe. If it's got a plan and causes things to happen, then if I am graceful and loose in the flow of events, I guess I can let go and trust...

And this is the crux of things. Trust. How do we develop enough trust on either side of things to be able to let go and allow the universe to work around and through us, and also, to let another human being have access to all of our most private and vulnerable parts?

There are a couple of ways, I guess. You put small things in the hands of the Other and see how it goes. You have missteps and get hurt, but realize that you are going to be ok and it's a generally safe bet to take another risk in trusting. This is the risk/reward or cost/benefit analysis framework. This is generally how it can work for a potential M/s relationship where people are in a "under consideration" period.

If we expect our significant others to be perfect, we have that illusion shattered when something goes wrong, and we are either able to be ok with their human foibles (and our capacity to be hurt by them and to hurt them in return) or we move on to the next relationship, assuming that it was the other person's shortcomings that caused it and if we find a "perfect" Other it won't happen. But we are all human, and we trip sooner or later.

Or, if we don't chose to expect perfection and do the "relationship hop," we sometimes give up on the notion of finding someone who is that "soft space to fall." We think that perhaps it is just a pretty illusion to be able to trust other humans with our most frail parts, so we decide we will just do without. And that is a loneliness that actually never gets better, it just ebbs and flows in its intensity, depending on how busy we can keep ourselves. I have always believed that there is no such thing as "comfortably numb," no matter how checked out we think we are...

As for the religious side of surrender, I'm not talking about the cultish notion that you should give up your thinking and rational mind and drink the Kool-Aid or give all your belongings to the Church. I'm talking about actually putting your deep faith in not the figure of the Buddha or Christ or Mohammed, but in the universal energy in which they answered to and in which they believed.

There is a notion that there is perfect sense/logic to the actions of that universe, even if we do not see it during the moments in which we are living. Those who question this argue that how could a loving universe allow evil and chaos to occur if there is a notion of perfection.

There is something I have become aware of lately that helps me understand how to answer this argument. In most religious or mythic stories, there was a perfect union that was at some point ripped apart. Some site wages of sin, others a perceived rift with the oneness of the universe. In all cases, the suffering we are experiencing, no matter what the package it comes in, is because we feel our separation from the divine.

I had an understanding that perhaps the general process of universal growth is more to blame for this than what our sin or separation would suggest. What if the way the universe propagates is more like when a fern grows asexually by putting out spores. By this I mean, the universe is a complete whole with no notion of time. In order to grow, it has a sudden and massive diversification and flings smaller parts out into the system. There the individual spore casings must grow and shift, and though some parts may fall prey to wildlife or weather vagaries or some inability to thrive because of internal makeup, they will all eventually become plants themselves.

There is no malice by the universe, it just wants to propagate. It wants to grow and resonate at the highest possible level. In each of the parts of the individual is the "genetic code" of the original "fern." We all know how the whole looks and resonates because we are part of it, connected at the very deepest levels. It is merely an illusion that we are not connected to the very energy that created us in the first place (even if you don't believe in a god figure, this still works within the realm of physics, I believe).

When we have free will, we are able to chose how well we thrive and what effect we have on the other individual parts. We can choose to be an agent of love or an agent of death. And when we (the collective) have achieved a certain level of resonance(oneness), this signals to the whole that we are ready to "procreate" once more.

This world view takes the guilt out of the equation, which is the ego's way of keeping us from understanding the oneness we actually share. We can't be made to feel bad for having done something wrong to deserve the perceived separation because the splinter was not punishment for action but a mere function of reproduction, division, and growth. It is our limited understanding which makes us focus on our being the individual parts as opposed to part of a divine whole.

Now I can hear a number of you saying reign it in, bring it back, get to what this has to do with surrender. I hear you:)

It is not that I am being asked to surrender my mind or my individuality to something... it is that I am a perfect creation as I am if I am accessing my deepest programming and then using my free will to chose to be an agent of love (which is continued growth as opposed to entropy and death). It is in my DNA so to speak, to do exactly what I am meant to do. Surrender to the universe does not ask me to do anything out of line, but it does ask me to have faith and live a more relaxed life.

And the funny thing is, this relaxing and trusting in the universe and my purpose in it has given me more of an ability to surrender to the people in my life. I trust that the universe has brought me in to a position that can result in all of our highest "resonating states." I have a responsibility to keep myself shiny, to show up, and to be of service to the needs of love. But I trust that if I am doing my part, then the universe will do it's part. And if I don't currently understand the why, that it will eventually be made clear to me.

I don't know if this will help anyone thinking about what surrender means in their lives. Perhaps it will just open a lively argument:) All I know is that surrender sounds easy, but it's taken me nearly half a lifetime to get anywhere near to it. And I find some days are easier to relax into than others (and some people are easier to trust than others).

But I think in the end it has a purpose. So I will try and practice love and surrender as much as I am able at whatever point in my growth I am currently.