#15 What does surrender mean?

I have known people who live in surrender in spirituality and have not gone through a painful experience. Surrendering as a result of a sweet and harmonious process was not my case. So I will speak to you from my journey through pain, although I can sense that it might resonate with you, no matter how you deal with it.

What is surrender? Surrender is crucial and it’s going to mark a major turning point in your journey. Surrender is an internal process that hits you when you can no longer control your circumstances. When you stubbornly battle against the universe, you drain all your resources and energy. It’s going to be a truly powerful and incredibly freeing moment. But whether it happens depends on the strength of your barriers, how mentally strong you are, your capacity to handle pressure and stress, and, most importantly, the depth of the pain you feel. I’m not entirely sure of the sequence and what variable sparks the surrender process, maybe it’s just a mix of different factors. What I do know is that when you reach the breaking point, it will happen.

Life is full of love, but you might not feel it until later. Before you surrender, you’re likely going through a stressful and painful situation, mostly because of how you perceive life.

Just know that everything will shift eventually, even if right now you’re feeling like a victim. You will believe that the Universe is punishing you, that you’re under a curse, and, naturally, that God has left you behind. Actually, during those times, you feel so distant from God that you start believing He’s watching you suffer intentionally, almost like a sadist. Your disconnect from God might even lead you to anger, cursing, or hating Him. But in truth, all that frustration stems from trying to create a rift from Life, a split that simply can’t happen, and it pains you to distance yourself from Love.

How to surrender to the Universe? To surrender, you’ve got to leave the victim mindset first. You can’t surrender with anger or fear, only with love, because it’s not about giving up, but about embracing full acceptance. Perhaps, like me, you feel the change coming.

One of the afternoons that I was living so bitterly, my sister, as she often did back then, came back to help me financially. At that moment, I knew that I would make ends meet. Back then, I was an Uber driver, and when the transaction notification showed up on my phone, I was overcome with emotion. Luckily, I wasn’t driving anyone at the time. I had to pull over because I couldn’t stop crying. I cried so hard, it felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. All I could feel was this overwhelming gratitude mixed with the bitterness that seemed to follow me everywhere. I’d stopped asking God for help with any belief, but I couldn’t bear the pain either; it was like living in constant agony. So, in desperation, I shouted out loud ‘what do I need to learn’ so that all of this would end.

Hey! I’d never asked that before; I’d always pleaded for help over and over again. But that afternoon, amidst my dire circumstances, I realized my conscience had found a new solution, one that hadn’t existed before. Since then, my view of everything that unfolded embraced a new possibility that troubled me. Even though life felt like a sadistic test and I still felt like a victim, I had a gut feeling that perhaps there was something I needed to learn from it all.

Leaving victimhood behind will bring you beautiful perks, including taking responsibility for your life. And this will make you grow.

My life was not a standard life, and for many years I felt like a shipwrecked ship adrift, aimless. I lived in different countries, different cities, I had more courtships than I wanted for the traditional life I was looking for for myself, I suffered abuse in two relationships, I got married twice in a foreign country far from my family, I had two wonderful daughters and I stayed in bankruptcy.

There was a point when my life was spinning so fast and everything felt so intense and overwhelming that I thought I would die soon. It seemed like I was living everything concentrated because God was making me live my entire life in a few years, since I didn’t have more time.

One day they wanted to take me away from my daughters by force and my life became such a painful and uncontrollable chaos that I could no longer contain it within me. That night, in front of the mirror, while I looked at my sad face, my mind fell silent, meeting my eyes with a silent understanding. For the first time, I felt that it supported me in what I was going to do. And I, with nothing but love for my daughters in my heart and uncertain of what was going to happen the next day and the coming months, I surrendered.

I let go of trying to control my life, accepting everything that came my way without needing explanations or understanding. A heavy burden lifted from my body, and I felt a sense of lightness. I laid down because I didn’t know if that meant I was going to faint. As I stared at the ceiling, unsure of what lay ahead, I dedicated myself to feeling the love for my daughters as my only Truth in the face of what had to come. Faced with the consequences of everything. And I fell asleep peacefully, because for the first time in a long time I no longer had anything to worry about.

And from here everything becomes more beautiful. Do you know the Parable of the Prodigal Son? Well, talk about this and the same thing will happen to you.

A few days after I surrendered, during meditation, I felt something incredibly beautiful that I knew transcended this world. It’s something greater than yourself, a connection with God. What’s amazing is that we always experience that sensation, but our lack of attention often makes it indistinguishable from the rest.

How could I recognize it if I was never conscious of it? How could I even conceive of it? But now, I feel it, and I’m aware of this truth: I’ve never been alone! You’re never alone!

Then I realized that life had done nothing but love me and give me every single wish I’d ever made. It was me! Every decision, the cravings, the demands for happiness I’d tirelessly pursued over the years, trying to fill the voids within… I got it all. I made every call, one after another, chasing after my own well-being. My relationships, my trips, my pace of life… I did absolutely everything I wanted, whenever and however I pleased.

And life just kept on giving. It gave to me tirelessly, loving me unconditionally without needing any explanations. It not only accepted my choices but lived them alongside me, right by my side. You realize? So that day I cried and cried and asked for forgiveness for my blindness, selfishness, and ingratitude. I had foolishly believed that Life didn’t love me, despite it always being there for me, within me.

This change will also happen to you. And your life will change.