I would like to live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

It is possibly my most treasured quotation, and I don’t even know who said it. But whenever I think of it I imagine my spirit bubbling around bends with sprays of joy and wild abandon, knowing not where I am being led but trusting that all will be well. Surrendering to what is.

I am what’s known in the psychiatric world as a ‘head type’. It means that this person is always ‘in her head’, imagining the next move, always planning, over-thinking, and a helpless victim of the monkey mind. How sweet, then, the sound of the word ‘surrender’.

Letting go of the need to plan the minutiae of how each hour of each day will unfold, and simply letting it unfold. ‘Allowing’ is the operative word here. Accepting that there is a ‘holy plan’ already in place and trusting it. This is my challenge.

There is a Sanskrit word for surrender: saranagati. It implies total surrender to the Divine and was considered by some ancient gurus to be the highest goal of life. To do it completely, trust implicitly, worry never, might – yes – be one of the highest and hardest goals in life. But just think how sweet it would be.

Saranagati is letting go of outcomes. And think of how sweet that would be! We have done all the work toward our goal, and it has not always been easy, but we sweated and put everything we had into it. We know exactly what the result should be (notice the word ‘should’). Now just walk away from that ‘should be’ and allow. Can you do it? Can I do it?

I want to, because when I do it I know that the Universe steps in and provides a most perfect outcome that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams. But on the way to that perfection I might get ‘plan B’ and instead of accepting it, I whine and weep that this is not what I wanted, that all is lost and life sucks.

Ha! What fools we mortals be

There is a famous phrase that my late husband used when tackling a challenge. I would see the letters LG LG printed faintly at the top of his speech notes when he was in politics. It stood for: Let go and let God. A bit of magic that anyone can weave when feeling tense and anxious about an outcome. It alerts us to how our body is reacting when we think, “It all depends on me.” Holding on feels constricted, tight, shallow breathing.

Noticing body language helps to let it go. Taking some deep, renewing breaths and softening opens a pathway to what is, as opposed to what ‘should be’. I am melting into the trust that a force greater than I is guiding me. Rather than keeping my narrow point of view, I am opening to new possibilities that exist. In body language I am standing with my arms open to receive vs. folded across my chest to block.

Marianne Williamson says that something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften.

It is such a graphic choice . . . do I wish to go through life with my teeth clenched and my arms folded, making people and circumstances wrong, or would I rather live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding?

Well, says my monkey mind, when you put it that way . . .

I can be the silent witness of my actions when I remember to do it. I call it my angel self. There is my angel self and my monkey mind. The first one takes over when I make a conscious choice to do the ‘let go and let God’ mantra. The nattering monkey mind (super ego) is silenced only then. The more I practice, the more my neuropathways adapt and the easier it gets.  Sweet surrender to the force that moves the Universe.  It is the wisdom of the Tao.   My ‘holy plan’.

I breathe into this grace, with gratitude that I didn’t have to invent it.


                   The greatness of our power is the measure of our surrender – William Booth