The paradoxical liberty of surrender
Words & images © Paul Ransom
Mine, own, control.
The mantras of denial are everywhere.
Keep, conserve, remain.
The fantasy of permanence has many manifestations.
Always, never, forever.
Such grand and ridiculous delusions are nestled deep in our cognition and culture.
Confronted with a world of ephemera and terrified by the blunt force of mortality, our ancestors enthusiastically embraced the idea of the everlasting. It helped to provide an anchor in a sea of ceaseless change and, (since our subjective experience strongly suggests that the self is a fixed point), it is hardly surprising that our conscious and unconscious radars are hard-wired to render everything in such a steady likeness. I as noun, rather than verb. Things as things, distinct and durable, as opposed to processes.
Viewed through the prism of evolution, this looks like a rudimentary survivalist adaptation. Fixed and predictable worlds are easier to navigate.
Considered metaphysically, it seems more like the bedrock of Being. If existence (the universe) is a yin/yang dialogue of flux and persistence, order and chaos, then stable forms and repeatable processes are one side of that cosmic coin. A side we so often mistake for permanence. An error we commonly compound with a desire for control. For invulnerability and immortality.
Yet, having pondered the nature of self and world for millennia, we now know that the hard border model is flawed. The line between our bodies and everything else is blurred. Objects blend into other objects. Every state, from the atomic to the astronomic, is liminal. The network of causation is more complex than A alone gives rise to B. Even the seemingly singular fortress of ego arises and acts in a multi-faceted and porous relationship with the external – other people, social/historical context, biochemical architecture, et al. The universe is a long, slow cross fade. God, as the song suggests, is a DJ, forever remixing.1
To say that we are enmeshed in a dynamic network of relation now seems obvious. Furthermore, to suggest that our lives are an unfolding process (or journey) sounds like spiritual cliché. “We know this,” we declare, proud of our enlightened modernity. Yet, look around, and everywhere we see evidence to the contrary.
‘Because the possibility of no underscores the power of yes.’
For every Buddha there are millions who clutch and grasp. Human civilisation extols accrual and empire. Ambition and influence. We champion as manifest virtue the conquest of the unknown and the taming of the wild. We habitually create monuments to ourselves and wax lyrical about legacy. We seek to exert control over the process of aging (mortality) and have invented numerous after-life stories to paper over our multiple failings in this regard.
Here in the 2020s things are no different. We are still trying to impose. Worldviews, values, tribal might. The list is long. Exhausting. So much effort, so much cruelty and vanity, for such futile ends. Today, dominion. Tomorrow, dust.
Build your border wall. It will crumble.
Clamp your love hard in your fist. It will run through your fingers.
Pile up your treasures. Soon they will be worthless.
Carve your name in stone. Time will rub all rocks to sand.
Forgive me, dear reader, if you feel I am here to berate or undermine. I am not superior. Neither is this a detachment pose. Moreover, the exercise of writing and posting this is as futile as any of the above. Proclaim your wisdom, little man. It will not even scratch the surface of silence.
That being so, why am I bothering? Put simply, lightness and its many rewards. Flexibility and balance. Feeling content and being thankful. Joy and release. Sometimes even euphoria. Also, it turns out that letting go is easier than holding on. (Harder at first, but once you get the hang of it, almost effortless.)
- For a deeper, more personal dive, check out Radical Lightness elsewhere on this site.
Here the question arises: what can we practically let go? Short of mendicant extremity, self-punishing puritanism and suicide, pretty well everything. If that sounds too holy or fanciful, remember that the art of truly and sustainably letting go is not about denying yourself. It is not mere refusal or abstinence. Nor is it a virtue signal.
Letting go – surrender – is a practise and a mindset. It cuts deeper than off-loading possessions, (although material downsizing2 can be a part of it), and even though there are intellectual and conceptual drivers, the deal-sealer is more emotional. It is a psychological reset. A deep sense that anything can be let go, and that the things you hold onto, including cherished notions of identity, are neither permanent nor mandatory. You are who you tell yourself you are; and that script can be edited or deleted at any time.
The standard objection here is that reality dictates that there are many things we have to do, be, etcetera. This is understandable, even rational, yet false. None of us have to do or be anything or anyone. Not even alive.
Is this my way of urging you to kill yourself or stop caring for your children? Of course not. The point here is not to champion blithe, solipsistic excess but to highlight the powerful and transformative effects of choosing. ‘Have to’ is duty. Weight. Resentment. A saint/martyr routine. ‘Choose to’ is the parallel understanding that you could choose something else. The act may remain the same, but the experience is different.
Does this mean that everything will become easy and rosy? No. There are circumstances we have little or no say in. All we truly control are our reactions and intentions.
- NB: I do not buy into popular manifestation mantras. In fact, I find them immature and arrogant. The notion that the universe somehow exists as a wish-fulfilment retail outlet is hyper-individualist entitlement mania thinly disguised as spirituality. Yes, we do have agency, but we are not gods. Remember hubris, folks. It is the shopping complex of franchised self-destruction.
At one level, this is ho-hum obvious. At another, potentially profound and life-altering. By embracing authorship we also accept responsibility. Not as a burden but as an opportunity. A gift. Because the possibility of no underscores the power of yes.
Thus, by saying yes to letting go, we are able to perform a kind of psycho-emotional magic trick. By abandoning the illusion of control we gain more control. By accepting that we own nothing we take greater ownership. Via the practise of surrender we supercharge our freedom.
No doubt this strikes many of you as paradoxical and counter-intuitive; perhaps nonsensical. However, it has a hidden-in-plain-view quality that recalls what we observe across the entire universe. The only constant is inconstancy. Everything is in the process of becoming something else.
We could easily park this in the realm of memes – another cute saying to impress ourselves with – but when we map it onto our lives, it offers us a chance to reframe.
Most of us exist in a fog of cultural messaging that urges us to stake our ground, accumulate and horde, strive for pre-ordained and frequently unquestioned objectives, and to identify ourselves in terms of ethno-national and other tribal traditions and ideologies. While this is not always malign or stupid it is often coupled with a sense of lack and/or onerous sense of duty, and is almost invariably rooted in a narrow-ego mindset that mires us in a world of socially visible approval seeking and endless (largely unfavourable) comparison – thus baking in an unhealthy degree of suffering.3
In this context, letting go looms as the most pragmatic option. Given that the processes of change will eventually strip us of everything – including our identity – why waste time and energy clinging on?
Indeed, as Ekhart Tolle’s pithy call-to-action urges, the smartest way forward is to ‘die before you die’.4 With apologies to Herr Tolle, I am taking his words somewhat out of context; and rather than maintaining that ‘there is no death’ I am suggesting that by truly embracing – rehearsing, if you will – the ultimate act of surrender we can uncover a fearlessness and sense of liberty that the standard command & control model rarely ever delivers.
But here’s the bottom line, folks. Whether you like it or not, or fight tooth and nail against it, what you do not let go will be taken from you.
Do not arrogantly assume that you are the exception. In the eye of eternity, we are all nothing. This is not our curse. It is our gift. And it is truly priceless. All we need do is accept it.
1: God Is A DJ. Faithless. 1998.
2: Personally, I have found that material downsizing has come hand-in-hand with the more psycho-emotional aspects of letting go. However, this does not mean that I embrace noble discomfort. Indeed, I have discovered that pruning the garden of possessions has increased my overall comfort level. Should you be curious, you can read about my Tiny House life here.
3: Of course, the presence of suffering is not all bad. Without pain, pleasure would have no meaning, and neither would it exist. Our challenge, as always, surrounds the dose.
4: In his book The Power Of Now, Tolle writes: ‘The secret of life is to die before you die – and find that there is no death.’
As If You Were Listening 