Surrender

Happy new year, Everyone!

Do you get swept up into the momentum of new year’s resolutions, reaching for something greater in the year ahead?

It has always been my Rajasic* tendency to reach higher or elsewhere, run from, fix, or fight against (even in my dreams!). In the past these defensive strategies may have helped me navigate difficult feelings and circumstances when I did not have more benevolent options.

Those strategies no longer serve me. In fact, my nervous system has suffered.

Now, instead of reaching or goal-setting, I’m practicing putting my hands in my pockets, at my heart, and into service. My current resolution, regardless of the date, is Surrender. I choose to surrender to myself, circumstance, and the collective.

This surrender mode does not include giving up or saying “yes” to everything. Rather, it compels me to pause before I react or change myself in response to internal or external feedback…

I observe, examine, discern, allow, feel, forgive, repair, heal, integrate, reframe, choose, respond, and again, and again.

I’m taking handfuls of the healing medicine that I had been dishing out which helps me regulate and respond in new and liberating ways…

I’m breathing, meditating, caretaking, reading, writing, dancing, yoga-ing, cooking, body oiling, singing, speaking clearly, and convening with nature.

In all of this, like never before, I’m learning to honor my wholeness and accept who and how I am, including the pain, vulnerabilities, and gifts that I carry.

After all, I am enough, just as you are too. Many of us have simply forgotten.

I won’t sugarcoat this though. Sometimes the process feels like I’m returning to the dark mines day after day to dig through impenetrable stone without fresh air or sky views.

This dark perspective is not the truth. It’s the seducing voice of unhelpful tendencies that may seek to protect or to derail us. They trained me to believe that I must work harder, bigger, and greater and achieve an ideal outcome. And should I not, then I would surely be a failure.

Here’s the truth: Digging up / through / into the mines of trauma, harmful behaviors, painful relationships, and one-size-fits-all conditioning, eventually reveals the gems that lay hidden all along.

The gems / gifts / hope were always there. In fact, you probably sensed them. Perhaps you just didn’t know how to find them, because you too had forgotten.

Gratefully,

Sarah

* Rajas is an Ayurvedic term in Sanskrit, describing an imbalanced quality of Fire + Air in the mind. This looks like anger, fear, control, excess, etc. By contrast, Ayurveda, Yoga, and Buddhism all believe that natural qualities of anyone’s mind is balance or contentment. This state of mind is called Sattva. It is also clear, aware, wholesome, and benevolent. Many of us have simply forgotten this is true.