HOW TO SURRENDER TO YOUR SOUL

The concept of surrender is receiving a lot of attention in spiritual circles these days, but what does it actually mean?

Here is how I see it.

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 Surrender is a teaching device: it is a way for us, humans, to learn about life, to learn about ourselves, and to deepen into the mysterious undercurrents of life. Surrender is also an instrument that our souls use to course-correct us.

 Surrender is an initiation. When you're called into surrender, it means that your soul is asking you to come closer. So surrender is an instrument of soul alignment: through surrender, we are nudged by the Divine and brought into higher alignment with our destiny. Sometimes surrender is the only way through which we can come into our truth and live it.

At this point we come directly into conflict with one of the popular New Age self-help teaching that propagates that you can create anything that you want, that you are the creator of your life. This perspective urges you to choose what you want and go for it, and then – voila! - you get to have it.

I have a problem was that because it simply contradicts my lived experience. And I think the problematic thing about this teaching of “you create your reality” is that it breeds entitlement. It makes people treat life as if it was Amazon Prime, where they get to add various items to the basket, and then go and check out with one click and get it delivered right away. Of course, the “you create your reality” paradigm is not all wrong. It has its value and its place – it does help people come into their power, and realize that they are not victims but have a say in their destiny.

Although this perspective is valuable, we cannot be absolute about this and claim that we create our reality all the freaking time. Because if that was true, we would already have been able to eradicate poverty, combat climate change, and so on. Nobody would be sitting around single and wanting a relationship -  they would just “manifest” it. But we all know that it doesn't work like that, and life is way more complex, way more intricate than that.

Therefore….

I suggest a reframe:

we don’t create our reality, we co-create our reality.

As much as there is value in creation, responsibility and power, there is equal value in surrender, trust, and allowing. This about the dance between masculine power and feminine power. Masculine power and energy gives us the ability to engage in outwards action and make things happen. It is the energetic of penetration: “I'm going to penetrate the world, impose my will onto the world, I'm going to make things happen, I'm going to go for it”. Feminine power and energy enables us to be receptive. It is the energetic of pulling in, having space, being available, allowing yourself to be penetrated.

The truth is always in the middle: we get to have both powers, creation and surrender, we get to be both giving and receiving, we get to go for it and to allow life to sort us out. There are things that we are in control of and that are our responsibility – this is how we flex our creation muscles, and get to experience the joy of being able to make things happen. But then there are also situations where the only thing left is to surrender, because not everything can be created and “manifested” when we want and how we want and how much we want.

We have to accept that there is also something bigger at play here, and that greater force is your Soul. That bigger “something” is your destiny. We have to accept the fact that there are things that we have no say over, at least not on the human level (maybe on the Soul level). Plus, there are invisible forces working on your behalf 24/7, orchestrating events that you cannot even conceive of with your rational mind or with your manifesting skills, synchronicities and miracles that you cannot even begin to consider manifesting.

That's why the “you create your reality” paradigm is so limited, because it only taps into your personal power. The greatest force at play is your Soul power, and Soul power can only be accessed through surrender. The value of surrender is in allowing yourself to be in co-creation with life, in allowing yourself to let go and let God. That is how you tap into Soul power. This explains why surrender is such a powerful learning instrument, a teaching device and an initiation in and on itself. There are three lessons that we can learn through surrender: humility, alignment, and devotion. In what follows I will share a a personal story about each lesson, to illustrate each point.

Lesson 1: Humility.

Humility means accepting that we're not entitled to always having what we want the way we want it, and realizing that there are things that are beyond our control. We can fight the current, or we can learn to flow with the current.

I learned this lesson through a rather mysterial experience of losing all four of my grandparents within the scope of 2016-2018. Those years were the time of grief and loss and mourning that never seemed to end, and the experience of facing death catapulted me into a dark night of the Soul.  Of course, grandparents passing away is the natural order of things – but given that I was very, very close with them (practically lived at their houses growing up), and that they all died one after another, it was hard to process.

Through that experience of grief and loss and death, with all of it being condensed into the timeframe of just a couple of years, I learned that the timing of our lives is truly a mystery. We don’t know when and how we will be gone, and how much we have left. While my parents and I were making plans with regards to the future and trying to control things like caregiving etc., the Souls of the people in question were already on their way out… And that showed me that we don't always have a say in how things develop, when they develop, and what the consequences are. I think in the face of death surrender is inevitable, because death is a great equalizer. It shows us that we are that we are not invincible, and that humbled me and allowed me to get in touch with the mystery of life in a deeper way.

That, to me, is humility: an invitation to start looking at life from a non-mental perspective, but through a liminal lens that cannot be neatly packed into a five step manifestation plan. We are powerful creators and sovereign beings, and we are also just stardust trapped in mortal bodies. Surrender is beautiful because we cannot fully grasp it, and that is exactly the point: it is designed to be mind-boggling. That evanescent nature of surrender will crack your brain open, it will open you up to higher levels of guidance and mystical understanding, and it can be a deeply spiritual experience. That's the real value of surrender – it is not a technique that you practice in order to manifest faster, but a doorway into deeper connection with God.

Lesson 2: Alignment.

This lesson takes us back to the “you create your reality” manifestation paradigm. So, there you are working on manifesting something that you want… but is this also what your Soul wants for you? If not, then your Soul will step in and course-correct you by delaying or denying your manifestations. No matter how hard you try, it just won’t happen if it is not aligned with your highest good and with the greater plan for your destiny.

I think it's important to question our desires. Why do you want what you want? You need to root of your desires, and discover their real nature and true source.

Surrender will strip you bare of all misconceptions with regards to what you want, who you want, what is meant for you and what is not. Ultimately, this is about aligning your personal human desires and your will with the desires, plan and path of your Soul, and then allowing all of that to be merged with Divine will and God’s plan for you. This, to me, is alignment. It is a living prayer: may I want exactly what my Soul wants for me, and may that reflect my highest good and the highest good of all. I even dare say: if it is not Soul aligned, I do not want it (no matter how great it seems).

It is also important to note that what you are actually surrendering to is not some force outside of yourself – it is your Soul. You are surrendering to your own highest path, you are not surrendering to some external authority, or to someone else's teachings or ideas about your life. You are surrendering to your very own destiny. As long as that is your overarching intention, you are safe in your surrender process.

In any case, this level of alignment brings trust and peace – you are no longer chasing the shallows or banging on closed doors, but using your power to co-create with life, in the direction of your truest destiny.

Here is how I learned this lesson. The one thing that I've always wanted is to live in Amsterdam. I'm obsessed with that city – it’s just so visually appealing to me, I feel great when I am there, my bestie lives there, so my connection with the Netherlands runs deep.

Manifestation teachings say: commit to what you want, go for it! That’s what I have been trying to do since 2016 when I realized I wanted to leave Berlin (notice the timeline, all these surrender-related lessons were unfolding in parallel for me, which is no coincidence but a divinely aligned way of being nudged into my highest path and purpose). Long story short: I tried, I really did – but the door just won’t open. Now, I can of course rationalize it by saying that as a self-employed unmarried woman with Russian citizenship, I don’t have an easy ride when it comes to moving countries etc. But the truth is: there are miracles and quantum leaps happing every day for all sorts of people. Doors that seem impossible to open suddenly let you through… That never happened for me with my Amsterdam dream. Why?

Because it was not in my Soul’s plan. It simply was not aligned. And the thing is, yes, maybe I could have hired a lawyer, could have thrown money at it. I could have tried harder, I could have pushed more. But at some point – last year in autumn 2020 – the entire situation started to feel like I was going against the undercurrent of my destiny. To me, it felt like I was trying to impose my will on Divine will, and that was taking me out of alignment with my Soul.

What I saw is that I was so stuck on the specifics of the place – Amsterdam – that I forgot about the essence at the root of that goal. Why Amsterdam? What is it about it that my Soul wants for me, and how can I possibly have it elsewhere? Is it really about the specifics, or is it about the frequency underneath?

If there is something in your life that you feel is stuck, something that you have been trying and trying and trying to create with no success, pause. Align with your Soul. If you have been applying your masculine power to the situation, and it didn’t move, perhaps the time has come to apply your feminine power, and surrender the hows and whens to life.

Get clear on the essence of your goal or desire. Is it really about the specific city, specific job, specific number? Or is it about the feeling that you hope to experience in that city, at that job, after that accomplishment? Align with the raw and real creative fire at the core of your goal, connect with the deeper “why” of wanting it, and surrender the implementation, the timeline, the details to your Soul and to the higher powers. Maybe in the process you will find that the specifics don’t matter at all…or maybe your goals and desires will be re-aligned and re-arranged, the way it happened for me.

What I learned through my Amsterdam ordeal is that I want stability and sacredness of a beautiful home base more than I want that particular city, no matter how deep and magical our connection. I aligned with the feelings and frequencies of my desired experience. Although technically I gave up on my desire, and gave up on my goal, I did not give up on alignment. I surrender the specifics, the idea of Amsterdam, to life – it may happen at some point, or it may not happen at all. And while it is all getting cooked in the mysterial divine cosmic co-creation pot, I focus on being and staying aligned in the now, moment by moment. Once I connected to the underlying feeling of having a sacred home, and surrendered the details, I was granted the feeling! It was easy.

That’s how surrender can actually be a shortcut. Surrender opens doors, it creates quantum leaps. It connects you to higher timelines, because surrender is the portalway through which your Soul gets in touch with you and leads you to your most miraculous timeline.

This is quite counterintuitive, because we are taught to “go for it” and to push and be committed and try harder and overcome obstacles and get out of our comfort zones etc…. What I personally find to be true is that your Soul does not want you to struggle. It does not want you to bang your head on closed doors. The idea of learning through struggle and growing through hardship is only true if you buy into it. What if you could learn through joy? What if you could grow through alignment?

Yes, it can be very hard for some of us to stop the doing, let go of control, and surrender. If that is you, then surrender is exactly how you can grow. When you let go and let God, you are allowing the invisible forces that are working on your behalf to finally kick in. Because if you're so busy, busy, busy, busy trying to micromanage the when and the and the what and the how, if you're just so fixated on the solution that you see (like I was fixated on Amsterdam), then you simply don't have the space available for an even better solution to enter your life. If you are too attached, if you are holding on too tightly, your energy field becomes clogged and very dense, and serendipity cannot enter. You literally become impenetrable to miracles. And then of course you feel like you always have to struggle and work hard for things… duh! What if it can all be so much easier and lighter? That is what surrender invites you to explore.

If you surrender the how, and the when, and the why, and only connect with the essence of what it is that you want, surrender and Soul power come into play. By no longer wasting energy on trying to control the details, you make space for divine re-arrangement and Soul alignment to unfold. Surrender does not come with a five-year plan or a set of clearly laid out steps, but it plugs you into guidance. Surrender is a dialogue between your Soul and your human self, in which you are never left drifting. So although surrender might feel like a passive action, in truth it is not. Surrender is a co-creation in which you are an active participant. Your job is not to interfere and micromanage the details that are beyond your control anyway, but to stay alert and aware and receptive to guidance. Your job is to maintain an ongoing connection with your intuition, and follow the prompts it gives you so that you can be lead to your next step, and through that, taken to the highest possible outcome. Building a solid relationship with your intuition is the best thing you can do for yourself, and it is the “how” of living a surrendered life.

Lesson 3: Devotion.

This lesson comes with a very personal story. There are those areas in life that seem to be the training grounds for our ability to let go of control and let life take over while practicing deep devotion to your desire. I call them surrender areas. Mine is romantic love. A romantic relationship with a man is something that I truly want, but I'm as single as my cat is grey (and she's very, very grey!). I've been single for a long time, and sometimes I wonder, wtf? Why? Why am I not being given something that I want so deeply and so sincerely? I know in my heart that this desire is aligned, so the previous point is ticked off here.

To me, what I am learning in this surrender area is deeper devotion: deeper devotion to sacred union, deeper devotion to myself, and deeper devotion to the vision of a romantic relationship that I am intending to create.  Being devoted to the desire and the vision, even though it seems to be taking a loooong time to manifest, is part of the journey. It is an incredible deepening of faith and trust. It is easy to surrender with little things, and it is easy to stay in trust for a short while – but what happens when you are stretched to edge of your capacity? A mysterial, alchemical transfiguration is what happens. In my experience, through staying in devotion to my vision of romantic love, I am being purified. I am being cracked open. I am being initiated into the level of intimacy with God and with myself that I never thought possible.

The greatest insight from practicing devotion is surrendering control. You have to accept that in surrender areas, there is literally nothing you can do to reserve engineer the outcome. This is kinda the point: all of your efforts will bear no fruit, and you will feel like you are stuck in some kind of a cosmic joke. In my case, I have done all sorts of healing on relationships, men, love, etc… to no avail. I have been shown that just throwing more personal development or money or effort at the subject is not going to make it happen faster, because then it would still be coming from control.

I was working on my love life like it was a project to be fixed. I went all in on it, and I thought – oh, if only I manage to hunt down and release that final limiting belief or that ancestral curse, theeeen I will meet my man. I was trying to find a shortcut. I was trying to bend the Universe to operate on my timeline. I was only coming from my personal power and human will, foregoing Soul power and Divine will, and I was shown that that road leads only to despair.

Things shifted radically for me when I stepped into the energy of devotion. I am not giving up on love, but I am no longer working on it as if it was a project. So I surrender my love life. I surrender my desire to be with a man. And even if it never happens in this lifetime, I'm going to be devoted to the path of sacred union anyway, because I want to want what my soul wants for me and I want to want what God wants for me. I trust that because my desire is pure and aligned for my Soul, its realization is already in the works. And I hold the energy of that vision. I am in devotion to that vision, without needing to try and make it happen faster. I am intentionally connecting with it daily, and that devotion is so sweet and so nourishing in and of itself that the “thing” I am desiring no longer matters. I am overflowing with the devotional love that I feel, and that is beautiful in and of itself.

It is important to note that surrender does not mean resignation - it does not mean that you are giving up on your desire. Surrender does not mean that you are abdicating responsibility for your life. Surrender does not mean that you don't get to have a say in the matter. That wouldn’t be surrender but distorted feminine energy and victim consciousness, and we don’t go there. Instead, surrender is the joy of softening while keeping your strength. Surrender, in a way, is only possible through finding sovereignty first, because sovereignty is where surrender meets strength.

Through strength you exercise your power to take action and play your part. Through softening you allow yourself to be guided to the highest outcome without kicking and screaming in the process. In that sense, true surrender always rests on the foundation of safety – feeling that you are not drifting, you are not helpless, you are not resigned… Knowing that even if you soften and let go, you are still carried and held by yourself and by something greater.

I know that for some people surrender might be linked to pain, or past memories of being forced to give your power away, trusting the wrong person, abdicating your agency. If that is your story, I invite you to give yourself the grace of healing. First, create safety and find your strength again. Make sure that you have your own back before you soften. That is the work of cultivating a healthy inner masculine presence. When that is in place, your inner feminine will finally be able to let go and trust for real.

And this is how the surrender paradigm unfolds. I wish for you to come into devotion to what is real and true for you, to be strong and soft and sovereign, and to let your Soul lead the way.