More Spiritual Surrender
I was listening to a podcast the other day (yes, I have an addiction to Super Soul Sunday Oprah podcast) with Gabby Bernstein.
The topic was spiritual surrender.
As you know, I love this topic. Well...maybe not love, but I certainly am constantly practicing it. I am programmed to try and control and manipulate my external world to MAKE MY DESIRES HAPPEN.
We all are. And this control and manipulation is resistance to what is. In my experience, it slows down or downright prevents our desires from coming to life. So much of my spiritual work is unraveling that pattern and allowing life to unfold.
In this talk, Gabby offers 5 Steps to Spiritual Surrender. I liked them so much that I feel they are useful to share with you all.
Step 1:
Take your hands off the wheel through prayer. Forget what you think you need/want and pray for the highest good of all.
Step 2:
Focus on what is thriving. Stop focusing on the absence of something. Focus on what is going well.
Step 3:
Obstacles are detours in the right direction. Rumi said “the wound is the place where the light enters you.” Don’t fight it when things don’t flow. There are likely opportunities arriving. Pause and pay attention and wait.
Step 4:
Ask for a sign. Ask and listen. Signs are everywhere. We are often too busy controlling and manipulating to see them.
Step 5:
When you think you’ve surrendered, surrender more.
When I heard her share these steps, I realized that this is often what I do. Not in such a linear format, but in general, I do these things. Or I try.
In her talk, Gabby talks about the concept of invisible doors. These are opportunities that can come our way that we could not even conceive of before. When we truly let go of the wheel and stop directing our lives, opportunities truly arrive that lead us in the direction of our heart’s desire.
I can say I’ve experienced this so many times, but I want to share a recent (and lovely experience):
This winter I really wanted to shift my exercise routine (ie, get more of it). I’m needing different things from my yoga practice as I get older; cardio and strength building are not on that list.
I love that high intensity, shock it to you rock it, cardio, weights, lunges, burpies, squats type of work out. I looked at Studio in the Heights group classes (because Lisa and Priest are amazing and so is their business!) but they didn’t jive with my particular scheduling needs. I also didn’t have the budget for 3x a week; group classes OR private classes.
My desire to do this type of work was strong. I felt obstacles around the options of the experience I wanted to have (private training). I kept thinking about it, but really didn’t do anything.
Then one day, a lovely local woman named Patricia Bogan, who owns a company called Jai Wellness reached out to me. She was following me on Instagram (hey, how about you follow me too? I’m @alyssasnowyogi) and was called to connect with me over coffee. I agreed.
When we were talking over coffee, we realized we could offer each other what we were each desiring. She could offer me private personal training (that worked with my mama of 3 schedule) and I could offer her deeply cleansing and spiritually connecting Kundalini Yoga Medicine as well as some spiritual business coaching.
And so we barter with each other. And it’s AMAZING.
My work with her, and hers with me, were invisible doors. I waited for the right opportunity and she followed her intuitive voice and a perfect match was made.
It is the waiting that often trips me up. I’m so conditioned to DO SOMETHING. Spiritual surrender isn’t about doing nothing though. It’s about our actions coming from a place of inspiration and intuition (not fear) and at the right time; which is rarely our timing.
Our timing and Divine timing are often not naturally in sync.
If it were, we wouldn’t have to learn patience and surrender would we?
