Surrendering Control: Trashing Intention and Soaring Through Infinite Skies
The first day of the new year, I sat in ceremony with the intention of discovering the roots of my control issues; going further with that intention, I vowed to transmute those roots into something of service to me and the world, and allow messages beyond my existing paradigms to filter through.
And wow did that ceremony teach me surrender. I surrendered myself to my worst fears and all the emotions that result from it. I don’t think I have cried that much in my entire life. Scratch that, I didn’t think that I was capable of crying that much at all, let alone in front of 20+ strangers. While I’ll likely share all the details of the ceremony in a later blog, I’ll focus on the insights regarding control and surrender for now.
It sounds obvious in hindsight, but beneath all the need to control was fear. Decades of fears layered upon one another: if I didn’t make sure my needs were met, they would never be met. I mean life had conditioned me to believe that the only person I could hold accountable for prioritizing my needs, was me. Isn’t that the adult thing to do? Put on your oxygen mask first if you are in a crashing plane?
I sat there, at 4 AM on the first day of the new year, on my knees, crying to the universe, screaming in my head, “What else do you want from me?”
The lyrics of the Tori Amos Song kept playing over and over again in my head:
“I crucify myself and nothing I do is good enough for you…
Got a kick for a dog, begging for love
I gotta have myself a ring so that I can have my cross
I know a cat named Easter, he says "will you ever learn"
You're just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird
I've been looking for a savior….”
Lost in my tears, I just gave into the song. I fell to the ground, just wailing, and surrendered to the universe until I couldn’t cry anymore. My entire life, I spent begging for love, only to be kicked down over and over again. Decades of therapy, trying to learn to love myself adequately enough such that I wouldn’t break down when people inevitably left. Throwing myself in ceremony after ceremony, dedicating myself to intensively studying indigenous practices, only to repeat the same sad story over and over again. I literally had nothing else to give. There was nothing else I could do. There wasn’t an oxygen mask to put on in the crashing plane of my life…
I felt the waves of anger come-the anger that comes from having no more options left.
Yes I wasn’t just fearful of my needs not being met. I was fearful of the person I would become if my needs weren’t met - an angry, uncontrollable, raging mess. I went from crying to the universe to screaming at the universe. Screaming about everything that I had been through in my life and how I was just exhausted from putting myself back together over and over again. How betrayed I felt, and how I could not put faith in the universe any longer. That it was obvious that not only did the universe not have my back, I was actually irrelevant to her. I literally felt my life going up in flames in my body, and I just didn’t care anymore. The quotes that I had lived my life by, like, “You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” (Rumi) felt like lies that I had used to trick myself into persevering for far too long.
And then I completely passed out.
I remember laying there, half on my back, half on my side, my arms straight at shoulder height. I remember staring at the veins on my wrists, the wrists I had wanted to slit so many times before, and thinking, I’m so depleted that I don’t have the energy to even try to kill myself. And then I woke up.
And as I watched the winter sun rise, it dawned on me that I witnessed the death of my closest friend: my egoic control mechanism to my innermost subconscious fears. I had witnessed my controlling nature’s death and grieved her, all in the first 24 hours of the new year.
I started the new year with the intention to transmute the roots of my control issues. My control issues transmuted to surrender; my fears transmuted to a new and fragile emotional security. I transitioned through the phases of grief: shock and denial, pain and guilt, depression, anger and bargaining. The reconstruction and upward turn, now underway, I can already feel the glimpses of acceptance and hope.
It’s interesting, because I see now that I used contort new age spiritual philosophy and shamanic tools into methods of control. Twisting every ceremony to a secret prayer for the limited dreams I had for myself.
Creating my own destiny. Empowering myself by thinking I had to take on the full responsibility of creating my reality.
From Joe Dispenza’s induction technique to indigenous mesa practices-all of it hinged on my desire to create my own future. Law of attraction relied on forcing myself to vibe higher, even if it’s for 68 glorious seconds of the day.
The dalai lama said: “I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.”
And that surrender to the guidance of synchronicity, that’s what most Type A personalities seeking spirituality miss. When in immense pain, one feels powerless. It’s natural to try to empower those that feel powerless. But the process of empowering often creates hindering expectations, instead of allowing the synchronicities and magic to guide. Of course it's difficult to tell those that feel powerless that there is magic in life. The truth is, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't. The belief in it is asking someone to take a leap of faith when their life has proven faith to be something for the lucky ones.
It’s a double edged sword that setting predefined intentions based on what the ego wants limits the possibilities. That creating realities with only the knowledge of joy that has been experienced creates a ceiling to an infinite pool of joy that is available to us all.
When I set the intention to transmute the roots of my control tendencies, I didn’t expect to evolve the basic foundations of decades of self work. I didn’t expect to find the co creation processes and laws of attraction as limiting, when just five years ago, they were tools for my very expansion.
Every tool has a time and a place I suppose.
But now, I fearlessly surrender to the synchronicities in my life, no longer needing the tools I relied on even last year. It’s two days before I take off to Mexico to shoot my first video pitch for a show. What does a nerdy engineer know about cinematography and story writing? All I know is the synchronicities highlighted a pathway, and I’m not letting predefined expectations hinder my path anymore. I’m not even letting well meaning intentions put ceilings on my infinite skies. Will you?
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