Learning to surrender to where you are in life is confusing to comprehend. It is the idea that you accept the present moment, but it doesn’t mean that you have to allow yourself to stay in an unhealthy or dangerous situation. It means that you recognize the problem for what it is, and then through conscious choice, you can start to make decisions that will allow you to move in a more positive and healthy direction. Seeing clearly and concisely is not a victim mentality but the beginning of your conscious choices.

Thinking about Surrender

Many hear the word Surrender and think you are giving in to whatever is wrong in your life. If you are experiencing abuse, addiction, or other adverse situations, you are not just allowing it to happen. Instead, it means identifying where you are clearly and in the present moment. Too often, our minds avoid the now because we hope it will change or for the reason that nobody will notice. To look at your moment and honestly understand where you are is a moment where you can pivot into a change. Knowing where you are, allows you to construct a map to flow toward where you are meant to be.

Surrender never means being passive in accepting any situation you may be living in and having no power of action. You always have that. People should never stop planning, dreaming, or creating a decisive battle in their lives. Surrender is honestly seeing where you are and flowing with that situation instead of fighting against it. Accepting your present moment without condition is the beginning of giving up your inner resistance to change, life, and who you are. Internal resistance uses mental judgment and negative emotions to say no to what is happening in your life.

Here Comes the Pain

Things will go “wrong” in life. Things will never be exactly as we think they should be in all aspects. First of all, who are we to think we understand how things should be? Millions of variables affect the world that we know nothing about. Life is much wiser than any of us. So rather than judge, accept things and people as they are, not force them to be what you think they should be. The difference between what your rigid expectations create and what is in the world is the pain you are experiencing in life.

Surrender is the power to let go of your expectations of your children, parents, spouses, loved ones, bosses, employees, and anyone in your life. When you accept people as they are and surrender your expectations, much of the pain and sorrow of life is eliminated from your life. This subtraction is a process that takes place on the inside and will allow you to make decisive, healthy actions for positive change in the outside physical world. But with no inner change of thought and understanding, external change and positive movement are nearly impossible.

Acceptance and Choice

Accepting where things are now does not make you take the situation you are in total. All undesirable or unpleasant life situations need not be accepted as part of your reality in the present moment. Stating the obvious is not acceptance but denying something as if there is nothing wrong when it is maybe delusional.

An honest recognition of a situation will allow you to choose if you want to get out. Looking at the current location without judgment or resistance to what it is will let you see what affirmative action is required from you and decide whether to take it or not. Being in the present moment ultimately will allow you the power to break out of your conditioned past and move you toward a life of surrendering to what is and away from the constructs of the egoic life.

“Surrender is deeply misunderstood as an act of weakness. Surrender is the bravest and most obvious thing a human ever does, and that’s why it’s so precious to the Divine.” – Andrew Harvey