Subtitle: What “Surrender” Doesn’t Mean

You can listen to the episode read aloud or you can read it for yourself.

I’m struggling so much this week with internal drama. There are external pressures and relationships in my life right now that are creating a pressure-cooker of dissatisfaction and anger in my being. I’ve been angry a lot—a much higher percentage of my time than is normally like me. It’s uncomfortable and exhausting, for myself and for those who live with me.

Ironically this is all happening as I’m a few weeks into an online spiritual course I’m taking with the Center for Action and Contemplation. The fourteen-week course is called The Divine Exchange and is taught by Cynthia Bourgeault. It is technically part two of the first course I took with her last fall entitled Introductory Wisdom School. So far we’ve spent two or more weeks learning and applying the concept of kenosis. Kenosis is a Greek word that Paul coined in the well-known passage of Philippians 2. It means “self-emptying.” Sometimes this gets translated “surrender.” Bourgeault also likes to use the phrase “non-clinging.” The concept was not developed by Paul. It has existed in wisdom literature previous to this point, but this is where the specific term is developed to name the act or attitude it represents.

Both the positive and negative of the term exist in the Philippians passage:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men…

That word grasped can also be translated clung to. Bourgeault illustrates it as a bracing or clenching position. It is resistance embodied. Or hoarding—holding onto something very tightly. I don’t really mean physical hoarding (although it could be); more so it’s the concept of hoarding ideas, emotions, ways of thinking. It can be a hoarding of position, roles, power, theology, political stances, etc. Any time our instinct is to clench and dig our feet in. Any time we are fearful and we hold on for dear life. “No, you won’t take this away from me… No, I don’t know who I am without this… No, my world will turn catastrophic if I let this go…” You fill in your own specialized blank.

This bracing position is the opposite of openness, of kenosis, of self-emptying. Kenosis is the more life-giving posture—for our body, soul, and spirit. It isn’t just a Christianized cliché. We live in an era where there is lots of brain science now to back this up. Brain scans show that when we brace, when we get triggered and clench, we lose our higher functioning. In neurological lay language, everything in our brain turns to self-protection mode. It gets wired through our amygdala, the reptilian part of our brain. This lizard brain translates everything in terms of fight, flight, or freeze. Its single task is to signal danger and survive.

That is all well and good when a car is barreling towards you in the road and your lizard brain tells you to jump out of the way. But it’s generally not helpful in interpersonal conflict. When we lock down and cling, we lose access to all our higher neuro capabilities, all the parts of ourselves that can think more complex thoughts and come up with more nuanced and creative solutions to the problems we face. These skills and resources come online when we are able to open and hold things loosely in a posture of surrender or self-emptying.

Bourgeault offers two spiritual practices as a way to put this goal of kenosis into practical work as an embodied muscle in our being, so that we can learn more readily to take the posture of openness rather than closed-off clenching. To make openness a more instinctual reaction. The first practice is centering prayer. I’ll write about this more depth at some point. I love centering prayer, but it’s not a particularly easy practice and it’s best done in twenty-minute sessions—not something that lends itself readily to life with littles. So I’m still in the process of figuring out to embed that one more regularly in my life rhythm. I’m much more prone to working with the Welcoming Prayer, which is the companion sister to Centering prayer. Bourgeault calls it Centering Prayer on-the-go. It’s meant to be a briefer more compact version of Centering Prayer, used as needed when hard moments arise. And if you’re anything like me, life offers plenty of these moments.

One of these more extreme recent moments found me entirely angry and shut-down. I’m standing in the hot shower after I’ve put my kids to bed trying to calm myself down—unsuccessfully—and suddenly it dawns on me that this is one of those moments I’ve been studying about for the past three weeks. [Insert lightbulb turning on.]

The Steps of the Practice

They go this way.

1. Focus and/or sink in. Become aware of what’s going on as a sensation within my body.

Yep. There it is. My jaw is clenched. My muscles are constricted. My head hurts. My shoulders are hunched. I might even be clenching all the way down in my toes. The point is to tune in. Become more physically aware and present. I’m not trying to fix anything. I’m just noticing.

2. Welcome. Quietly and gently begin to say the word “welcome.” I can even lightly name what I am welcoming.

Welcome anger. Deep breath. Welcome fear. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

It feels counter intuitive. What? Welcome this hot mess inside me? But I have to sink in and welcome it before I can get to the third step. I have to stop resisting it or pretending it’s not there or stuffing it or numbing out to avoid it. Hello you effed-up mess inside me. I see you. I feel you in my body. I welcome your existence as part of my reality.

The third step is to let go. But Bourgeault cautions not to rush to the third step. Don’t force it. Go back to step one and two as many times as needed. Where are you in my body? Yep. Still there. Okay, welcome. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

When it begins to subside, and “all storms do,” she says. I hear this incredulously. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way when I’m angry for days. But I suppose she’s right. Eventually the storm does subside. At that point, move on and practice the third step. You can keep it simple and simply let go of the thing you were welcoming. I let go of my anger. Or you can toy with the slightly more complex version that addresses what Thomas Keating calls the three categories or programs of the false self by stating the following:

I let go of my desire for power or control.

I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.

I let go of my desire for security and survival.

Or try my slightly simpler version:

I let go of my desire for control.

I let go of my desire for approval.

I let go of my desire for security.

Then the last one is the hardest: I let go of my desire to change the situation.

When Crap Hits the Fan

I’ve been reading and listening and journaling about all this for weeks. Now, standing in the hot shower with my anger, this is the moment to open and let go. I recognize it. I see what I could do, and I don’t. Or can’t; I’m not sure. I clench further and hang on to that emotion. I’m not willing to surrender it. Some spiritual guru I am!

Eventually I do. By the next morning I can feel it start to dissipate. This one seems to be a gradual letting go until I merge back into the regular flow of life again. For now.

Because I’m given more chances to pick it up again later that week. This time the anger hits full force and hangs on for days. I can feel it in my body. All my cells are clenching. And it’s exhausting. One night I can almost swear I’m starting to feel sick from it. I know it’s in my best interest to open and let it go. It’s not being kind to me. It’s not being kind to my children or my husband. But I can’t. And I think here’s my deepest fear.

If I open and let go, then that let’s person X (who is part of the reason I’m angry) completely off the hook. I fear I have to succumb to forgiveness and graciousness and accept their behavior or lack of behavior and love them anyways. I’m afraid that surrendering will make me a victim.

What Does “Surrender” Really Mean?

Step three is where Bourgeault says this practice can go woefully wrong. So often the notion of kenosis or surrender gets tied to ideas of power over. What am I surrendering to? It often feels like another person. Someone who gets the “authority” whether they are deserving of it or not. They win and I lose. I have an especially complicated relationship with the word “surrender” because it was used a lot in the cult I was a part of. Any time something got hard or difficult, I was told I just needed to surrender more. Don’t complain; surrender instead. The implication was that I needed to surrender to God, that it was what God wanted from me. But the twisted manipulation buried in that spiritualized language really meant that I needed to go along with whatever my cult leader said and not question it. She was the voice of God made manifest after all. (Forgive the snark. She never directly said that, but it was the implied overtone of the whole place over time.)

But this isn’t what surrender or kenosis means. (How many people have lived with abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual—over the years because of the misinterpretation of what this concept means?!) Bourgeault makes it clear that it’s never the situation you are welcoming or letting go, only the emotion. For instance, you would never welcome cancer or incest. But you can welcome the fear or shame that those situations create. She teaches, “[Welcoming Prayer] is never used to welcome or acquiesce to a situation that is intolerable. This would be a misuse of the prayer. What it’s for is to restore an inner equanimity, an inner wholeness and empowerment that allows you to decide how you’re going to deal with the outward situation. You’re really saying the power of your conscious presence is stronger than any thought, form, emotion or physical assault that can arise within it.” She further clarifies that letting go of my desire to change the situation “doesn’t mean being a victim. It means I’m not using this practice to fix something broken so that I can get on about my life. It says I have the ability to abide well, despite whatever is happening. I don’t have to change the external circumstances to get to a place where I myself can be whole. I’m okay.”

Ironically (or not ironically?), this sounds a lot like what my marriage counselor said was his main goal for our time together: for both my husband and I to each have skills and ability to be okay within ourselves regardless of what the other one is doing or not doing.

A Reason for the Word “Practice”

It all sounds amazing. I can grasp the concept, see the vision. And then I’m still left stuck in the hot shower refusing to let go. I think perhaps my vision for what could be or how I want my reaction to go can sometimes leave me feeling hopelessly disappointed. But I think that’s part of the journey too. I’m probably supposed to be encouraged that I recognized the possibility of letting go in the moment, even if I couldn’t fully follow through. I’m sure Bourgeault would tell me to sense that frustration in my body and welcome it. Welcome where I am right now in my journey of starting to exercise that muscle. It’s a spiritual practice. Not an arrival point. None of this can be forced.

You can’t start by bench-pressing two-hundred pounds. You have to start with the ten-pound weights and the sore muscles and limping stride that come with trying even that. You have to build up slowly over time. And you have to start somewhere, right where you’re at. If my husband was honest this week, he might say I’m still struggling to lift my metaphorical three-pound weights. He’s probably struggling to lift his too. Maybe next week we’ll do better.

The other thing I can do is develop a vision for what it is I am surrendering into. The word surrender in its literal form means “to hand yourself over to.” We often associate this context with war and handing ourselves over to an enemy. Surrender in this context means humiliation and loss. But it doesn’t necessarily mean we are handing ourselves over to an enemy. I’m not surrendering to the person who is causing my triggering anger-fest. I’m entrusting myself to a higher intelligence, to a field of abundance, to an ineffable love. (If your view of God is an angry judge on high who is waiting to punish you if you do something wrong, this step will be problematic for you. I’d suggest reconsidering some of that theology.) If I could grasp a true vision of what I was being invited to sink into and open to, then maybe letting go wouldn’t be so difficult.

In many ways this practice is the spiritual journey encapsulated. Whether we like it or not, it’s a journey that takes a lifetime. So find a good pair of walking boots and fair thee well sojourner.

References:

• My webpage explaining how to begin practicing The Welcoming Prayer
• Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening by Cynthia Bourgeault (see Chapter 13 on the Welcoming Prayer)
• 40 Day Practice: Welcoming Prayer by Contemplative Outreach
• Blog Post on Thomas Keating’s False Self
• Center for Action and Contemplation Online Courses

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Be well.