Surrender

On today's show we talk about how and why you should surrender to certain circumstances in your life and in what ways this act of surrendering benefits you.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the podcast.

It's your host,

Glenn Ambrose with Ben Barber and Dave DeAngelis.

You're not going to hear Dave.

He's behind the glass.

No.

He's shaking his head at us.

As always.

Yeah.

But this time it was a positive head shake.

It was like a yes as opposed to a no.

It's never a positive head.

Even if he's shaking his head yes,

He's thinking,

Oh God,

What am I doing here?

Yeah.

That really helps the energy of the podcast.

I feed off of it.

That made him laugh.

Oh no.

He wants to effect of being serious.

This should turn into a video podcast just so that we can have a video on Dave's reactions the whole time.

Yes.

And we'll plant like a camera that he doesn't know about and just record like 30 episodes.

Who's going to edit it though?

I don't know.

Dave.

He'll never know.

We'll have to get him to surrender to the idea.

Oh,

That's a good idea.

You know what?

I'm organically thinking that that should be the topic of our discussion today.

The heck with it.

Let's just go with it.

Surrender.

Surrender.

Too bad.

We really need Dave to kick in with the song.

I know.

Can you do that in post,

Dave?

He said sure.

Okay.

It's a verbal agreement.

Okay.

So right now we're going to pause for Dave's surrender song and break.

Mommy's all right.

Daddy's all right.

They just seem a little weird.

Surrender.

Surrender.

But don't give yourself away.

Don't give yourself away.

And we're back.

I hope you enjoyed that rendition.

So we're going to talk about surrender today.

Okay.

So there.

What about it?

How to do it.

What it looks like.

Why it's beneficial.

How's that for ideas?

Sure.

Okay.

I'm still not understanding the concept.

Well basically the,

I mean,

Surrender is a huge part of spirituality and spiritual growth.

But recently I read the surrender experiment,

My journey into life's perfection by Michael Singer who also wrote one of my other favorite books,

The Untethered Soul.

So then when I saw this book,

I heard about this book.

I wanted to get it because I enjoyed his first book so much.

And this one is really,

It's one of the cooler books I've read in a long time because it's not really a,

It's not a story.

It's not a how to book.

It's not a book about like how spirituality works or how to use it.

It's really his life story.

Okay.

So what is the book?

It's his life story and it just,

It shows what his intentions were and what he was doing as he went through things.

And so it's just kind of almost like to me,

It's kind of like a case study.

Instead of somebody saying,

Oh,

You need to do this,

You need to do that,

It just is like,

This is what happened to me.

This is how I dealt with it and this is what happened because of it,

You know,

That type of thing.

So as you go through his life story over the past 30 or 40 years,

You see how surrender really works,

How he did it in different situations and how his life enhanced because of it.

So it's really cool.

And I mean,

Like this,

You know,

I'm not going to go through the whole book,

But it's the idea of surrendering to your personal desires,

You know,

What you think is right and what you think is wrong because we look at life from such a microcosm,

Such a small perspective.

You know,

We don't really know what's best for us because we can't see the big picture.

So all we can do is kind of deal with things as they are,

As they come up,

And then they come up and we deem them as good or bad.

And then,

You know,

We go off of that.

And living like that is difficult.

I mean,

We're constantly judging things as bad without having the full picture,

Without understanding,

You know,

The grand scheme of things.

So some things that we resist,

That we think are bad,

Aren't necessarily bad.

So like Michael Singer,

In the beginning of the book,

He wanted to go into the woods and meditate.

He had had a spiritual experience about kind of recognizing the chatter in his head,

That voice of the ego just constantly chattering,

And he wanted to quiet that voice and meditation was helping and he wanted to go off in the woods alone and meditate.

So he ends up buying a little piece of land and ends up building a house on it.

Well,

Not really a house,

A shack to meditate in and stuff.

And that ends up turning into,

I think at this point in time,

Now this was in the 70s when he bought it,

I believe at this point in time,

He has over 900 acres of land in Gainesville,

Florida.

And it's a whole spiritual community around him.

Now,

He wanted to be alone.

He didn't want a spiritual community,

You know?

So he had to surrender to what life was bringing to him and allow it to happen,

Even though it was against his personal preferences.

Okay.

So my question is,

A minute ago when you were describing the premise of it,

You said you were talking about surrendering to your own desires?

No.

Oh,

You were talking about surrendering your own desires.

Yes.

Surrendering to the flow of life.

Okay.

So you are surrendering what you want for what is happening.

Yes.

Okay.

Exactly.

And that's exactly what he did.

He wanted to be alone,

But he surrendered to the fact that life was bringing these people into his life and into this and forming this community.

And it was in ways that he never would have.

.

.

Like if he actually was like,

Okay,

I'm going to buy this land and I'm going to start a spiritual community,

There's.

.

.

I mean,

I don't know what would have happened and what wouldn't have happened for sure,

But I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have gone this well.

It was like the different stories that fell into place that allowed him to build this facility,

To acquire more land,

To everything that it consisted of was things that he wasn't looking for.

It was just brought to him.

And I mean,

I don't think anybody's intelligent enough to come up with these grand schemes of putting all this together,

Even if they wanted to.

I mean,

I don't know.

I think I'm capable of it.

No.

Not this good.

It's very creative.

The universe can do some amazing things for us,

Can move mountains for us in ways that we never even thought of.

So in surrendering to the flow of life and just accepting whatever came to him and letting go of his personal preferences.

.

.

And one of the things that I liked about this mentality of it is it shined.

.

.

This is nothing new.

I mean,

Surrender and all that stuff,

It's a huge part of spiritual life.

And I've surrendered in many areas of my life.

And some of the surrenders that I've experienced have borne the best fruit because of the surrender I was capable of doing.

So I'm no stranger to surrender,

But the way he talks about it is put it in a different light for me.

And it was just about that personal preference aspect,

Because it really shines the light on us not really knowing what's best for us.

Because I could surrender a lot of things,

But then when it came to my personal life,

It's like,

Well,

This is what I want out of life,

So I'm going to go in that direction.

And it's like,

Well,

That might not be best for me because I mean,

How do I figure out what I want out of life?

I figure it out based on my perspective,

Just my perspective.

And my perspective is very limited.

And it's also guided by my ego,

Which does not have my best interests at heart.

So now all of a sudden I'm seeing like,

Okay,

Well,

My personal preferences,

Why am I holding on to those so tightly?

If they're based on a limited perspective and what my ego thinks is best for me,

Maybe I shouldn't be hanging on to that.

Maybe I can surrender more from a different angle.

I always wanted to be a singer.

That was something that I had to give up pretty quickly.

But it's something that if the ego pushed harder,

If you had the stubborn fierceness of this is what I want to do,

Sometimes you just can't do the thing that you want to do.

And life and everything is telling you,

This is not a good idea.

This is the direction you should be going in.

You know what I mean?

Is that kind of,

Is that a very surface level version of that?

People that.

.

.

I see that all the time because I'm around the arts,

People that really want to sing or be an actor or all of this stuff that just can't do it or sports.

People that every little kid,

Not every little kid,

But a lot of little kids dream about being a superstar athlete.

Yeah,

And there's a fine line there because something that is.

.

.

There's a difference between something that we want to do because it could be a lot of reasons,

Maybe because we find it interesting.

Maybe our ego wants it.

Maybe like in the arts situation,

Maybe if somebody's around the arts a lot and they really enjoy singing,

Then they just kind of unconsciously think that they should be a singer and it's really just not their path.

So they should be doing something else.

So that's one option and I think that that kind of,

In a way,

Backs up what you were saying as a yes.

But the other side of that coin is that sometimes we have these deep desires deep within us that aren't just surface,

That they weren't born of the ego.

They're real deep desires and they're things that.

.

.

I believe that if we're given a real deep desire for something in our heart,

Then we can accomplish that.

Otherwise,

We wouldn't have that deep desire.

So I mean,

There's lots of athletes and singers that weren't the best,

But it was what they really wanted and they weren't taking no for an answer and they achieved it.

I mean,

We're in New England,

So it's like.

.

.

Things like this,

I think of some of the stories that I've heard in the sports arena,

Like Dustin Pedroia.

There's a lot of people where everybody's going,

You're too small to do this,

Doug Flutie,

Julian Elliman.

It's like,

You're too small,

You can't do this.

And they're like,

No,

Because that's a heartfelt desire.

That's different than I think I want to do this.

So the reason that whenever this comes up,

I make that distinction because I don't want people giving up on their dreams just because it looks difficult.

Just because it looks like it can't be done.

The books and the movies and stories and history is filled with people doing things that they weren't supposed to be able to do.

So if there's a heartfelt desire,

Then do it.

If you can't sing,

Get singing lessons.

If it's that heartfelt desire,

It's just sometimes it's a little difficult to tell if it's a heartfelt desire or if it's an egoic wanting.

So I mean,

The book that I'm talking about too,

Michael Singer,

Not everybody is going to live life the way he lives his life.

Like this guy was,

I am surrendering,

Period.

That's what I'm doing.

I don't want anything other than a peaceful heart,

Quiet in my head.

And I don't care if I need to sit in the woods alone.

In fact,

Yes,

I absolutely will sit in the woods alone for the rest of my life in the pursuit of achieving that.

Not everybody is going to or would want to put their entire life on hold in that type of dramatic way.

He did and he can teach us what works and what doesn't work.

But it's not everybody is going to do it that way.

So that was just his particular way.

And it's a good example of what works.

Now we just need to figure out how it works in our life.

Is surrender.

.

.

Now I want to sing that song.

Is surrender the same as acceptance in the.

.

.

Because on previous podcasts we talked about how acceptance is the way to end suffering.

I feel like surrender also ends suffering.

Yeah,

It's just,

I would say it's a step further.

So first you kind of need to accept that there needs to be some acceptance of what's going on before you can get to the level of surrender.

So if you're in the middle of resisting something,

It's really hard to surrender.

And I mean,

That's not to say that you can't do it all at once.

You can accept and surrender all at once.

It just kind of depends on the situation,

But for clarification sake to what the difference is between the two,

That's kind of why I want to touch on both.

It's because I mean,

I can accept that I hurt my ankle last week.

If I'm resisting that,

I can accept.

And that can be all I do at that particular moment.

I accept it.

Okay,

Good.

And I can find peace there.

But I can also surrender to life's flow and say,

Okay,

Well,

You know,

I surrender that this was the,

Life knows better than I know.

So there's a good reason and this is going to benefit me.

So I'm just going to go with it.

The ankles hurt.

Okay,

What does this mean?

Am I going to go to a doctor?

Am I going to meet somebody at the doctor that's going to benefit my life?

Is it going to slow me down enough?

Where have I been doing too much and it's going to kind of slow me down and help me focus on the work that I'm doing?

That could be a surrender.

So it's surrendering to the flow of life.

And it's,

You know,

If there's something that I don't like coming in,

It's,

You know,

That's really where Michael Singers,

He just,

He had stuff that he did not want coming into his life.

And he was just able to go,

Okay,

Well,

Life is bringing this.

It must be for my best interest.

And I'm just surrendering to life's flow no matter what it is.

No matter if I like it,

Whether I don't like it,

Doesn't matter.

I'm just going to go with it.

And he went with it and it just,

Everything turned out better than he ever imagined.

Yeah.

Um,

I'm gonna,

I have a quote.

Quote?

Yeah.

I'm looking up quotes.

We haven't done quotes in a few weeks.

A few shows.

Um,

I like,

I like this one.

It's,

Uh,

But I don't think that it's just very short.

It's actually,

I can.

It's one of the first quotes that came up about surrender.

Um,

Also surrender to what is let go of what was have faith in what will be.

Sonia Riccati.

Do you know who that is?

No.

I don't know.

No,

But it's,

It's a good quote,

You know,

Surrender to what is.

It's,

It's the actuality of life,

You know,

It's,

It's kind of funny.

The resistance we put in to deeming things wrong that have already happened.

It's like,

You know,

And it's not only the,

The,

The things that have already happened because those,

That kind of mimics acceptance,

Surrendering to something that's already happened mimics acceptance very closely.

So surrendering to what's coming and just,

You know,

Taking your hands off the wheel and saying,

Direct me,

You know,

Let me walk by faith,

Not by sight.

That's that's deeper surrender.

I have a,

I have just two more that I actually like,

Uh,

The strongest position you can be in is complete surrender.

Yeah.

And you know,

That just kind of reminds me of the aspect of surrender that it's,

It's really,

We have to understand that we're really not in control.

Anyway,

You know,

What happens is the reason that we don't like surrender is because we're disconnected from our source.

We're disconnected from that source of love and comfort and safety.

So since we're disconnected from that,

We need to find comfort and safety somewhere else.

Well,

The only other place we can attempt to find comfort and safety is through control.

If we can fool ourselves into thinking that we have some sort of control over what happens to us,

Then that gives us a sense of safety.

You know,

The reality of it is we don't have control.

Life is going to happen and it's going to flow whether we like it or whether we don't.

If we go with it and surrender to it,

Then we're going to be working in communion with it.

If we're constantly,

You know,

Trying to control it to try to get it,

Give ourselves this sense of safety,

It's an illusion,

You know,

It's not real.

So that is,

You know,

That's why surrender is the ultimate pathway to peace.

If we surrender to life and what's happening and understanding that,

We're going to be fine if we let life happen to us and go with it the way it's directing us.

You know,

Like if we just float down the river,

We're going to get to where we're going.

Just let the current take us.

But if we're fighting against it all the time,

It's,

You know,

That's where we feel all the stress and the strain of life because like you don't feel strain or stress unless you're working against something,

You know.

So that's what a lot of people are doing in the society is they're working,

They're fighting against life and they're wondering why they're so exhausted.

Because you're fighting against life.

So stop fighting against it,

Surrender to it,

Go with the flow and let go of these things that in your head you've deemed right and wrong and no,

This isn't proper for me because it doesn't seem right.

Well,

It's just a limited perspective you're making that judgment from.

The other quote that I had was,

Transformation happens on the other side of surrender.

Yeah.

Which I think you've said to me.

Probably.

Some form of that at least.

Yeah,

That's when it is,

It's stopping fighting.

That was my biggest,

My biggest spiritual awakenings occurred around my largest surrender,

You know,

Like almost 13 years ago.

It was that throwing up my hands going,

I can't live like this anymore.

I can't do it.

I don't know what I'm doing.

But whatever I'm doing isn't working and I just can't go on like this.

That's why hitting bottom can be so powerful for so many people because it helps surrender.

When you hit bottom and it's really,

Really,

Really clear that your best,

I mean,

My life wasn't falling apart because I wasn't trying.

It was because my best wasn't good enough of what I knew.

I was doing my best at what I knew and that did not work and it was really,

Really,

Really obvious that I couldn't do it.

I couldn't do this thing called life properly.

Once I came to that conclusion,

I said,

Okay,

I can't do it,

You do it.

You're supposed to be there for me,

So come on in and take over because I can't do this anymore.

I did that from a very,

Very deep level.

It wasn't the surface thought.

A lot of times people go like,

Well,

Yeah,

I'm sick of life,

So I just said,

Okay,

I can't do it anymore,

You do it and nothing happened.

The universe works off of intention.

You have to want it and feel it more than anything you've wanted or felt in your life.

You have to truly surrender with every ounce of your being and not surrender on the surface and underneath,

Just wait to grab the controls again.

Before we were recording the podcast today,

We worked out.

We did.

We worked out at the commencement center.

The music that we were listening to was Ben Fold's.

That reminded me of a Ben Fold song that I had a different perspective on.

Actually last Thursday when we were driving home from here,

Dave was like,

No,

No,

No,

That lyric means the opposite thing that you're thinking of.

I just want to talk to you about that for a second because I think it applies to this.

The song is Still Fighting It.

The chorus is everybody knows it hurts to grow up and everybody does.

It's a dad talking to his son.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up and everybody does.

So weird to be back here.

Let me tell you what,

The years go on and we're still fighting it.

We're still fighting it.

We were talking about that song and I was like,

Yeah,

That's a good thing.

We're still like,

We're going to have to grow up.

We're fine.

He was like,

No,

No,

No,

That's a bad thing,

Ben.

He's saying that that's a bad thing,

That everybody is fighting growing up and that they should just accept that they are.

I'm like,

Oh,

Right,

Yeah.

Maybe that's why it hurts to grow up and to be an adult and that's why it sucks as the song says.

Because people are fighting against it.

We were talking about this earlier a little bit too.

I think that that's a big thing that I've had to surrender,

Try to surrender.

Not there yet,

I would say.

To growing up.

To grow up,

Yeah.

To being an adult.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think,

Whenever that mentality or topic comes up,

I always think of my son,

Like years ago,

He said something to me,

Like in passing,

I don't know why he said it,

But one day he just goes,

Oh,

I don't want to grow up.

And I was like,

My heart sank.

And I was like,

Well,

Why?

Why didn't you want to grow up?

And he's like,

Well,

Because it doesn't look like much fun.

And I went like,

Oh crap,

I'm doing a really bad job at being a good example of what being a grown up is.

Because I don't want my son to be afraid of growing up.

I don't want him to not want to become an adult.

And I told him,

I said,

Well,

I understand why you would say that.

I said,

But being a grown up isn't all bad.

The freedoms that you get,

The things that you're capable of doing are endless as a grown up.

You don't want to be a bigger expansion of who you are because you have more freedom to do more things,

To be more of who you are.

That's what I want to teach him.

I don't want,

Of course,

His responsibilities that come along with it.

But once those responsibilities are embraced,

They're really not that big of a deal.

Like oh my God,

I have to go grocery shopping.

Like how taxing is that?

If you don't fight it,

It's an hour out of your day.

It's really not that big of a deal.

Oh,

I have to pay bills.

Oh yeah,

But you get your own house that you get to design and however you want.

And you can pick where it is.

And the freedoms that come along with the responsibilities are tremendous.

So the amount of fun that you can have,

Like I mean,

Some of my friends go take off to all different parts of Costa Rica and all different parts of the country on surfing trips with their friends.

Well kids can't just do that.

Adults can.

So it's like there's benefits if you look at it.

It's just that initial fear of growing up.

I think it is something common that people fight against because it's just like everything else.

In my opinion,

We fight against things because we don't slow down enough to look at things and dissect them.

Be like,

Okay,

Why am I afraid of this?

Well is that true?

Well what if I accepted it?

If you go through those types of exercises with things,

Nine times out of ten,

We're just running around living unconsciously,

Afraid of things that we really don't need to be afraid of.

And that's part of the reason why we stay stuck and don't experience some of the wonderful things that we could.

Just the fear we're walking around with.

Definitely.

Well this has been a great conversation about surrender.

What is the name of the book?

The name of the book is The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer.

And we're going to add that to the Glenn Ambrose book club?

Yeah,

Yeah.

I don't know if I'll have a book club here on it where I go through it just because of the format.

You had one of the Untethered Souls,

Right?

I did have one on that,

Yeah.

The format of it,

I don't know if it's the best for that.

I don't know,

I may.

We'll see.

But I definitely recommend reading it.

I mean,

It's just a refreshing style of writing where it's somebody's life story,

You know?

You can kind of get caught up into it.

And the things that happen to her are amazing.

And I'm just going to take a few seconds to touch on some of the things.

Some of the things was,

Like I said,

He's in the middle of a whole spiritual community,

A very,

Very large one that he never expected.

Even at one point,

That shack that him and his friends built,

Somebody liked it and wanted him to build something.

He had no knowledge of any of this stuff except what he had done on his own.

So he goes and builds something,

Turned into this huge construction company.

So then he sells that and he didn't want to build this house.

It was just life handed it to him.

So he was like,

Oh,

Okay,

Well why don't I do this?

And whatever life gave him,

He did the best he could with it because he looked at it as a gift from the universe.

Whether he wanted it or not,

He looked at it as a gift from the universe and he was going to do the best he could with it.

And then after the construction thing,

He saw a computer at Radio Shack and typed on the keys and something popped up on a screen and it just captured his interest.

He thought that's neat.

He felt a connection with it.

So he went back and bought one because he had the money from this construction company and ended up writing software programs because somebody asked him to.

And this was early on so he had no education in it.

He just started doing it and he had this natural affinity to it that he had no idea that he had.

So he just started doing it.

And then next thing you know,

He's CEO of a multi,

Multi,

Multi-million dollar corporation that grew up around him,

All from the woods,

Still living in the woods near Gainesville,

Florida.

I mean,

It's just amazing.

Well,

You've definitely sold me on the book.

It's amazing what this guy has accomplished.

And his other books.

So it's March,

Which means it's still Spiritual Finance Month at the Life Enhancement Center.

And if people want to contact you about that or anything else,

How can they do that?

My website is the best,

Life-enhancement-services.

Com.

So yeah,

Each Thursday night for the rest of the month we'll be going over some of the new relationship with money information.

And the last Thursday of the month,

Kerry Cudmore will be back to wrap up the month.

So yeah,

If you're interested in that or anything else,

Let me know.

In the meantime,

That's a wrap.

Reviews

This podcast is awesome. I've been working on surrender and this helped me to think more about how I can do it. Thank you!

Loved this so much!! Really spoke to me and to two close people in my life that could benefit from hearing this! I was so glad to hear about Michael Singers book since I thoroughly enjoyed the untethered soul. Thank you for sharing this, my soul needed this reminder!

Really interesting, very definitely need to look into this more... Thank you ☺️💜x

This was exactly what I needed to hear today.

Loved this. Especially the laughs and Cheap Trick at the start!

Excellent. Thank you!