Walking the pathless path
Words & images © Paul Ransom
“There is nothing to understand. And if there is something to understand, there is only one thing to understand, and that is to surrender.”
– Prem Rawat, 1978
For many – perhaps most – surrender has negative connotations. Understandably so. It is typically associated with notions of passivity or giving up, or with yielding to pressure, external and/or self-imposed. It can also imply bowing to threats and blackmail, (divine or otherwise), acting from a fear of censure or punishment, or accepting poor treatment and unfair outcomes. Yet, this is not what I mean by surrender.
If we take a moment to disentangle surrender from submission and capitulation, we can reframe it as something active – a prism of humility, gratitude, and equanimity. An empowering acceptance. A lightness underscored by the reining in of ego, and by the shedding of vanities attached to righteousness and the delusions of control. A flexibility engendered by the loosening of fixed points and the softening of certainties.
Surrender is fluid, not cast in stone. It is not a doctrine, a lifestyle, nor a gospel from on high. Rather, it is a practise. An approach. Not so much the path, as the way of the walk.
Thus, when I surrender, I do not mean to a power. Not to the will of God, nor to the plans of fate. Likewise, I am not meant to be anything or anyone, and I am not trying to win a place in heaven, nor tick the boxes of karma. I do not surrender for a prize.
In surrender, we let go of wisdom seeking and its multiple poses. We drop the need to be right. We no longer require such validation.
Crucially – powerfully – we also surrender the proud banners and hard borders of identity. Here, the fixed I dissolves, vanishes, and something more porous emerges. Less quarantined, more enmeshed.
I am not a sacred pronoun; am not inviolable, eternal, or specially anointed. I am an event, an ever-shifting, ephemeral awareness in a networked relationship with everything else. I am an act of noticing.
Behold…the transitory art of being. The brief and beautiful paradox of our existence.
Now, when we clear the clutter of standard spiritual dogma, of higher purpose and alpha-meaning mantras, our view is uninterrupted. Simple. Unframed. Unedited. And as such, awe-inspiring. Liberating.
Therefore, surrender and be free. Not perfect, nor without suffering or travail, but emancipated. Unburdened by ‘have to’. Off the leash of holy orders. Spared the score-keeping of cosmic gatekeepers and social policing.
By surrendering the architecture, we reveal the space. Formless, placeless. Without entry conditions. A realm beyond measuring. Timeless, sizeless. With room for everyone.
We may imagine this as an infinity – oceanic or microscopic. We can call it simply what is, or we can think of it as empty. A void, an absence. It can be both everything and nothing. It does not have to be accurately described or fully divined. Neither does it have to be sanctified as mystery. Surrender is not an enlightenment cult.
Do not surrender in anticipation of miracles. Nor wisdom, nor boundless joy. Surrender does not come with guarantees. Neither will it reward your virtue, nor punish your sin. It is not meritocratic. At the door of surrender we shed entitlement.
So too we blur the linearity of purpose, allowing for multiple outcomes. Surrender is simply walking. Open motion. Flowing, finding, responding. Trusting yourself to experience. To act. To shapeshift.
Yet, surrender does not make life painless. Rather, it creates context. Grants perspective. Reminds us that – ultimately – nothing matters. Least of all ourselves, and our precious dramas and conceits. We are as impermanent as the breeze. Our individual lives, our shared cultures, our whole-of-species journey…all fleeting. Never reducible to a single state. At once becoming and unbecoming.
As for the now…everlasting, infinitely small. Irreducible, unquantifiable, forever slipping out of our grasp. Like a regress. At once a oneness and a non-ness.
However much I meditate on the now, or sacralise it, or seek to approach it, I will never be in the now all the while I am I. Only beyond the event horizon of death, outside of time, of flux, will I return to the now. But by then I will have ceased to notice, because the now cannot be experienced. The now is a void. It does not contain self.
In surrender, we do more than accept this. We embrace it. In turn, it shifts from dry metaphysical idea to euphoric experience. The ecstasy of erasure, of nothingness, is like a wave that lifts us out of vanity and grasping and sets us free. For now we understand, with a mix of wonder and thanks, that all we are and will ever be, and everything we know, touch, taste, love, loathe and long for spins around a central nothing. In life, we pas de deux with death. There is no music without silence.
The grace and beauty of this is sublime and – when we stop resisting and mute the wasteful clamour of our thousand denials – we are duly unburdened. There is no compassion more absolute than oblivion.
Indeed, the unified and perfectly balanced condition of oblivion lies at the heart of surrender. Counter-intuitive though it may seem, when we yield fully and without caveat to nihilation, our existence flowers. Likewise, when we burst the confines of cosmically inscribed purpose and universally mandated meaning – and abandon the ego striving of enlightenment ladders – we are free to experience futility as life-affirming agency. Deep appreciation. Peace. Joy.
That my life is brief and (essentially) meaningless is a source of profound gratitude. Oh, what mercy. What miracle. What gift.
Simply to exist. What astonishing wonder. I need no other god, no next life, no sundry inspiration.
This is what is.
To this I surrender. Absolutely. And even as I type…a current coursing through me, like minty exhilaration…reminding me once again that, no matter what, I will be no more or less dead and that, for now at least, I am as alive as ever. All other categories irrelevant. Even surrender. For such blessings are already granted.
Surrender is simply a way of experiencing them.
Postscript: Further reading
Elsewhere on this site I have elaborated on other aspects of surrender, spirituality, and living lightly.
1: For a more metaphysical take – The Divine Absence
2: For a more practical take – Radical Lightness
3: For an artist perspective – Surrender The Need For Success
Thank you for reading.
As If You Were Listening 