Awake in This Life

It can be helpful to know that, regardless of our situation, whenever we make a decision, we always have three options: 1) we can leave the circumstance, 2) we can act to change the circumstance, or 3) we can completely surrender to the circumstance. There really isn’t anywhere else we can possibly go. Even if we decide not to decide, we’re still making a decision—one that is really just a disguised version of leaving or turning away from what’s going on. Since avoidance of any kind is a form of attachment, it can only provide temporary relief from what is causing us distress and may even work to increase our pain as well as the pain of others.

On the other hand, if we decide to change the situation and we act from a place without any attachment or negativity, we are doing enlightened work. Acting from this place of deep surrender is always compassionate since it supports a deepening of consciousness for everyone involved. At the same time, we need to be careful. Often the actions we offer in order to change our situation are tainted with self-interest. Just as with avoidance, this type of self-centered action usually comes back to us in the form of more suffering.

Surrendering to any situation, however, offers nothing less than a perfectly appropriate response to whatever circumstance in which we find ourselves. This, again, doesn’t mean that we buckle under the circumstantial pressures we encounter. Nor does it mean that we sit on our cushion, or worse yet on our couch, and never take any action. Instead, it means that we consciously act from the openness of deep surrender. When our action springs from this place, we end the cycle of suffering that traps us all. Our consciousness begins to shift once we’re off of this ride since we are no longer bound by any limitation of our past history, our future wants, or anything else that might arise in our minds. With disciplined practice, this unfettered Awareness of our personal situation shows itself to be deeply impersonal and ultimately free of any hindrance whatsoever.

This simple way of being even applies when disaster strikes us. If we can’t leave the disaster, and we can’t act to change it, then the only choice left for us is to surrender to it and act from the peace that arises from the letting go of even more. This is the work of committed practitioners who meet their circumstances with grace and ease no matter how difficult things may get and then commit to fully engaging the life in front of them. Suffering in any situation arises only when ego fights against what is actually happening. The ego of the committed practitioner might identify with any number of circumstances, but because the practitioner has brought surrendered presence to the experience, the ego can do little more than impotently rail against whatever it sees.

Surrendering fully to what is happening and then engaging the world from that place of openness allows for us to witness the entire experience and participate more consciously in life. This moment-to-moment surrender doesn’t change any given disaster we might face, but it changes our relationship to the disaster at the most basic level of our consciousness. This shift in our relationship with our pain pushes our experience from the confines of circumstance into the openness of Ultimate Living.

The practice of letting go dissolves attachment at a radical level. Attachment is the cause of suffering, so surrendering attachment essentially offers us, as the Buddha taught, “the end of suffering.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will never experience pain or discomfort ever again. In fact, we might find at times that things in our lives hurt tremendously and go very poorly. But whether things are going well or not, at the summit we are conscious of the fact that all judgments are merely evaluations made by the ego. Knowing this, we no longer get caught by them as easily. When we let go, our consciousness deepens. In the process of this deepening, we find that there is little concern about any of ego’s activity, least of all its judgments.

Really letting go can take lots of patience and practiced repetition, however. When our release is partial, we often find ourselves in a spiritual purgatory since ego resists surrender at all costs. During the process of surrender, the ego is continually being marginalized as it is exposed to the light of our consciousness. The last thing the ego ever wants to do is let go of anything, so when we practice letting go over and over, we are answering the call that the ego wants us to ignore.