Enter and blend
Relentless intent can be in the service of the ego – the aspect of one’s being that falls prey to the illusion of separateness. The coupling of relentless intent and ego allows one to see all others as objects and as fair game for aggressive manipulations into serving one’s own interests. Relentless intent and ego are prime ingredients of insanity. Relentless intent must be combined with surrender.
Surrendering is to the universe, to the great mystery which actively breathes us. Surrendering means dropping our “self” stories, no matter how entertaining and fascinating and intriguing, in favor of the larger story. We declare ourselves planetary and universal citizens.
Surrender means to drop all self-induced trances. The word surrender points toward “rend.” When we surrender to the universe, we are torn apart and rendered as someone new. No longer a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding alienated protoplasmic blob, we become an integral embodying of the universe itself, of the great mystery, of the origin unfolding, evolving.
To Be Rendered
On our South Dakota farmette (26 acres along the Vermillion River), we lived with an assortment of critters: hogs, sheep, chickens, ducks, and horses. When something died that was not edible (we were active carnivores), we called the Rendering Man. He would whisk the carcass away and assist its transformation into further usefulness.
To surrender means to allow oneself to be totally rendered. It is a painful process. The old carcass is whisked away, its parts put together into new, imaginative and useful ways.(36)
A friend said over the phone as we spoke of surrender, “You mean I have to give up and accept defeat?” “Yes,” I said, “Give up. Accept the feet. Do both at the same time. It’s called embodying heaven and earth.”
Total Abandon
A Ronin is a warrior with no earthly master, no organized clan; a warrior who roams outside the established camps.(37) He allows no part of the human consensus world to dominate. He follows the spirit of the lifeforce.
Becoming and being a Ronin is an essential stage in the life of Spirit. At some point, one abandons all established structure and support and stands alone, no Lord to serve, no cause to fight. Being a Ronin provides opportunity to become totally empty. Once empty, one can be filled.
I recall, as part of my Ronin journey (a previous part had been stepping out from organized religion), when marriage had dissolved. Maybe you know the hell of a divorce. All illusions of the previous life are suddenly gone.
My “stuff” (clothes, canoe, treasures of various sorts gathered across a lifetime) had been retrieved and stored in a friend’s South Dakota barn. I had no job. My “home” was a temporary room at a dear friend’s house. I received word that the barn had burned and my stuff had vaporized. After the first shock, I laughed and laughed and laughed. I stood naked in the universe clinging to nothing.
An inner work of the warrior is total abandon. This requires complete trust. Total abandon means being totally present, clinging to nothing, trusting the Source while not clinging to the trusting, and embodying the immediate current surging of the Wellspring, allowing the Tao to Tao, God to God, Spirit to Manifest, Emptiness to Form, and Form to Empty.
The inner work of the warrior is to let go of the obscurations of “I, Me, Mine” and of “Want, Don’t Want, Don’t Care.” By allowing these obscurations to dissolve, the warrior opens to and becomes a direct manifestation of life force, of spirit. In this sense he “lays up his treasures in heaven”(38) and “dies before he dies.”(39)
Drop Your Story
We are story tellers. Whatever is unknown, we make up stories about. We begin to familiarize it (to bring it into the family). This is one of our gifts as humans. Like all our gifts it can also become our torment.
We can become attached to the story, begin to see the story as reality. We can “pave paradise” with our stories and “put in a parking lot.” We have “paved” the unknown with interpretation, with a story that no doubt is pleasing and satisfying and may even have great predictive value. But it is still just a story.
The torment is the “parking lot.” The torment is the solidification of our mind, the hardening of our “ought”-eries, and the “should”-ing all over ourselves. Our mind is made up like a bed in the morning and we don’t want any strange ideas sliding between the covers. We exist in deep trance.
We forget that a story is a story is a story.
A man came in to see me. He told me a torturous story in which he was a victim, the world was unfair. He was alone against the world.
He was right. His story was justifiable. A jury of his peers would not have convicted him. His plight was the fault of others. He was right. And in pain. And stuck, nothing to do but point his finger at his situation.
He finished and sat quietly.
I said, “All of that is just a story.”
The silence in the room was deep and long.
He struggled with my statement.
“What do you mean?”
“What you told me is a story. Things happened. What you told me is your story of what happened. You are a victim and there is no way out. As you spoke, a different story came to me describing the same events. I can tell it to you. If you want to hear it.”
He wasn’t so sure at first. He was slightly stunned at my comments. He may have been expecting commiseration, consolation, sympathy.
More silence.
When he said yes, I told him the story. He was the hero of a journey, rather than the victim of a circumstance. The situation he had described was now one small part of a continuing adventure – the saga of HIM – a saga in which there was no end.
He now had a choice. He could continue to tell himself the victim story, which he had every right to tell, but which would keep him in painful stuckness. Or he could adopt a variation of the story I had told him, which allowed him room to maneuver, to act freely. Or he could drop all stories and simply be here, mindfully present without describing himself over and over to himself, without putting himself into a trance state of ME and THE STORY OF ME.
He decided to adopt a variation of the story I told him, while not discarding the victim story.(40)
No Enemy
Isshinryu karate is a vicious form of in-fighting, of bringing one’s body close to the body of the other and using all the hard surfaces of one’s body (fists, knees, elbows, feet, fingers, knuckles, etc.) to attack and destroy the soft areas of another’s body (eyes, throat and neck, armpits, solar plexus, stomach, groin, kidneys, etc.). As such, it is one of the “lower” forms of martial arts.
“Lower” means “no harm to me, excessive harm to you.” Higher forms of martial arts practice “no harm to me, as little harm to you as possible.” The highest arts practice “no harm to me, no harm to you.”
The lower arts are relatively easy to learn. Any bozo can destroy. The highest arts can be more difficult. They require a distinct change in attitude, involving a different relationship with fear and anger. The energy of fear and anger remains present, yet fear and anger are nowhere in sight.
This particular shift in worldview is a reason all warriors of spirit, Taoist practitioners, Christian contemplatives, Islamic Sufis and Buddhist Zen masters appreciate each other. They live, breathe and respond as those outside conventional reality. They do not get caught in fear or anger because there is no enemy.
One surrenders all thought of an enemy. One opens to a higher art.
In the Soup
Rumi (41) has a great poem about a chickpea being boiled in a cooking pot. The chickpea takes it personally and tries to leap out. The cook knocks it back in. The chickpea isn’t done.
Of course, we are that chickpea. We decide, at times, that we have had enough. We want out now! Getting out in the midst of the process is a half-baked idea. “But the water is too hot!” we cry.
Getting more agitated, we forget about centering and grounding, opening and releasing, fierce intent and compassion (for our own boiling and the boiling of others). We forget that we volunteered for this mission.
We are all in the soup together. Instead of evasion, the warrior cries: “Boil me some more! I’m not done yet!”
Submission
Submission has dual meaning. To submit means to be both active and passive simultaneously. To submit means to yield, to give up; to submit means to hand over, to turn in. One is actively committing to yielding something up, purposely turning something over.
When the word is used in logical argument, such as “I submit to you that the sky is blue,” the meaning is that I present it for your consideration; literally, to sit side by side with.
When we submit to the principles of the universe (the will of God), we are turning ourselves over to sit side by side with these principles, this will.
To sit side by side with the universal flux and flow is a submission. We begin to move in accord with rather than in opposition to. We enter and blend.
Surrender and submission are acts of courage and trust. We acknowledge that we have emerged (are continuously emerging) from the source (the Living Father, the Ever-Birthing Mother), that we have created our own bubble heads (secondary reality), and that we shall return (are continuously returning) to the source. We surrender and submit ourselves to this reality.
Forgiving is Releasing
Sometimes forgiving is interpreted as letting someone get away with something. We might feel that we want to hold it (their perceived trespass on us) against them for the rest of their lives (and maybe even after). But we are the ones doing the holding and holding comes with a price. Our souls suffer with bitter anguish.
The holding is within us. The person we are holding something against is probably not affected at all by our holding. Long term holding leads to cramp and strain. Unforgivingness is a warping endeavor.
Forgiving is releasing, letting go. What is released? What is let go? The festering sores within our consciousness which we have been nursing so carefully; the clinging sores of resentment, of anger, of hatred, of vengeance. When we forgive, we release ourselves from torment. We allow the wound to heal.
Hands Attaching
A martial practice I have adapted to couples counseling and to work teams is called “hands attaching.” The exercise is useful for determining your degree of comfort with surrendering to someone else’s lead or whether you must always have your way.
It goes like this. Pair off. Stand facing each other with the right foot extended a few inches. Allow the backs of your right hands to touch lightly. That point of contact is where you are having your conversation. One of you will move your hand within the space in front of you, in and out, up and down, right and left. Move smoothly and with full intent. The other of you is to keep your hand attached to the hand of the one who is moving. Breathe naturally. Do not speak. Do this exercise for 3 to 5 minutes.
Notice what happens with the way you feel, what you think, your ability to lead or to follow. Now, continuing verbal silence, reverse roles. The leader now follows wherever the other goes, keeping contact with the other’s hand.
Continue for a few minutes.
Discuss what happened. Were you more comfortable leading or following? What were your styles in leading? In following? Forceful? Detached? Jerky? Smooth? Predictable? Unpredictable? What else? What was communicated each time? Was there a time when you did not know who was following or leading, when your movement merged?
Your Surrendering Practice
One way of surrendering is the practice of humility, of releasing self-importance. To be humble is not necessarily to always put oneself last. That practice can be quite self-inflating. To be humble is to release one’s tight bounds that one is always defending. To be humble is to let go of the bounds, to let go of that all-too-sensitive self-awareness.
What is your surrendering practice? Do you continuously dwell upon you, singing the refrain of I-I-I, me-me-me? When do you drop your story? What is it you need to forgive, to release, to let go? What do you do to open to the Great Capacity?
