Whether we do or have ever done yoga, each of us will have several different surrender poses at the ready, for different times of the day and years…
Sometimes it may be appropriate to run away, other times to lie on our back on the beach or in our beds, or to turn on a podcast as we’re out walking, or to stop and smell the roses, or look out at a view from a window, or have a cup of tea, hold hands with someone, be licked by our dog, or just sit in silence for a few moments…
And what each of us is surrendering to, will have different tones, and one great similarity – we’re essentially surrendering certainty… to knowing, or being able to control what is going to happen next, darn… and it is our emotional selves that is saying darn! Generally, our emotional self prefers to regulate ‘us’ around a fairly narrow path of okayness, a narrow path of receptivity around our daily activities… Yes, a highlight every now and then is wonderful – looking at the recent full moon… and a low comes along every now and then too, an illness to someone close. But on the whole, most of us are content with a fairly narrow emotional pathway….
Now figure-out-mind is okay with a wider view, cos then it can get to work and try and fix things, make changes, try and turn things around, keep busy, go faster, not wanting to stop, running out of breath, whatever it takes – it loves another problem… But what about us?
What about us? Who are we? Are we the story line that continuously plays along the screen of our minds (like the windmill from last Sabbath)? Are we the narrator commentating endlessly on all that ‘we’ see and experience… If we are, then we’ll need to be dropping into a surrender pose many times a day, and some days many times an hour… which paradoxically is a good thing! How so?
Well… okay let’s take a surrender pose right now and see… stop reading here for a minute, gently close your eyes, take a deep slower breath, and bring your attention to your chest, lower chest, belly where your breath starts and finishes… and just rest here for a few
moments… no-where to go, no-thing to do… just to sit here in this surrender pose… and notice what you feel – not commenting, just noticing… now slowly come back out…
For just a nano second, ‘we’ may have come to a stop, where figure-out-mind and our emotional selves drop away… let’s not try and describe it any further – that defeats the point… The point is, that life’s uncertainty will always be with us, fantastic! Because this provides the invitation for us to drop lower than our human coping mechanisms… into that deep infinite well of not-knowing and not needing to know… And each day there will be a myriad of invitations for us to re-member to
shift into a surrender pose… and that’s all we need to do… as we’ll discover, we’re sitting on the welcome mat… where certainty and uncertainty abide without need for comment…
Yes, taking time for longer sits of meditation or a surrender pose is helpful, beneficial… and equally so, is to take moments of a surrender pose thought every day, and why? Sit with this wee koan, and allow it to sink you into your belly beyond words for a moment…
A reason to take a surrender pose is so
we don’t act unconsciously upon our thoughts
to erase life’s uncertainty…
