What’s the difference between resignation and surrender? To me, resignation seems to have a hopeless aspect to it, giving up on possibility. Surrender doesn’t have that flavor. It’s more a letting go of control, so that life can bring possibility to you instead of your clutching at it. Yet, perhaps there is more to resignation than first meets the eye. What if you have to go through resignation to get to surrender? What if in resigning yourself to life not turning out the way you thought it would, you let go at such a deep level that complete surrender is at last possible? In expecting nothing, you open the door to everything.

It requires inner work for you to cultivate a perspective within yourself that sees your intellect as a servant, not as your identity.

To the extent you are capable of doing that, you can then play the game of academia, do the work that only can be done in that analytic fashion without being trapped in it, and have your interaction with other people through the game.

It’s like Monopoly in which you’re the top hat and I’m the thimble, but behind it you’re here, I’m here, and you’ve gotta be there. The predicament in academia is many people identify with their thoughts so much that they think they are an academic, instead of being a being who’s doing academics.

Have you ever had a gut feeling, decided not to listen to it, and then later regretted that decision?

This has been the case for so many people. In the last 30 years of my work, talking with tens of thousands of individuals, nearly all have said they regretted ignoring their gut feelings. In fact, never in all those years have I heard someone say, “I had this gut feeling, this inner voice, and I went with it, and boy do I regret it.”

It’s time to do the math. When we regret ignoring that small, inner voice 100% of the time, we should learn that trusting it is the obvious way to go.

We know we should listen to that gut feeling, and yet we override that small voice all the time because we doubt it; we think we’re not enough; we think we couldn’t possibly know more than the authorities or those who have come before us and so on. What we must understand is that we are built of creativity and are destined to come up with new answers and solutions –  to bring new ideas that work and to be innovative –  and oftentimes those ideas start with that small, inner feeling in our gut.

Have you ever felt lost? Not in the Google Maps kind of way but in life? Do you sometimes feel like your life is not going anywhere? You feel overwhelmed, you don’t know what to do, where to go, who to turn to—you simply don’t know what to do with yourself. It happens to the best of us sometimes. But why? 

In our connected world, too many people and other stuff find their way to us competing for our attention. The digital world, particularly social media, gave birth to a new way to get us addicted to consuming content that’s not always good for us. In truth, even those that are seemingly inspirational and beneficial for us, can prove to be detrimental. 

There also seems to be way too many experts, teachers, influencers and gurus who claim that they could change our life and solve all our problems. How many times have you fallen into that trap? Reading countless books, enrolling in courses, attending workshops and seminars that’s supposed to change our lives but we end up in the same place—lost, confused and even more overwhelmed than when we began. Why? They’re supposed to help us, right? What gives?

When I was young, my Dad would always tell me to “think and breathe before you speak.” He was one of these very thoughtful men who never went anywhere without a book in his hand. He was all about learning, about expanding our view of the world, and he was all about being grounded and centered before opening one’s mouth. He spoke 14 languages fluently (although with a strong accent.) He taught me words were everything, and even more to listen deeply beyond the surface to what is not said too.

I, on the other hand—rebellious, reactive, noisy, always challenging everything asking “Why?” and not giving much credit to his love of clear focus and being discerning with one’s words. 

He’d remind me, “Be careful once you say that because you can’t take those words back.” 

This week, in particular, I’ve made a commitment to do that. Think and breathe before I speak. But that actually doesn’t work (sorry dad) because it’s backward. Breathe first, think after—then speak! 

The path next to our home opens up to unlimited hiking, biking and horse riding trails.  It also leads the way to a stone bench that is situated on a saddle between two peaks.  I have fallen in love with both the trail and the mystical meeting place. It is here that I connect with family, friends, spirits and always Mother Earth.  Or maybe, it is here that I stop and really open up.

I leave my house by 8:00 in the morning, this is when the temperatures are only in the high 80’s.  Durning the weekdays I might see a couple people, usually I encounter no one.  Most of the path is a mild climb with dirt and sharp rocks.  It is not until you choose a trail that climbs to one of the peaks, that you get steep terrain.  Even the mountain bikers have to get off and carry their bikes on parts of the technical trail.  Everyone I meet is happy and enjoying the sun and the expansive feeling. Or maybe, my happiness is just being reflected back😊

Are you stressed or upset?

The Practice:
Leave the Red Zone.

Why?

There I was recently, my mind darting in different directions about projects in process, frazzled about little tasks backing up, uneasy about a tax record from 2010 we couldn’t find, feeling irritated about being irritable, hurrying to get to work, body keyed up, internal sense of pressure. Not freaked out, not running from an attacker, not suffering a grievous loss, my own troubles tiny in comparison to those of so many others – but still, the needle on my personal stress-o-meter was pegged in the Red Zone.

Then that quiet background knowing in all of us nudged me to cool down, dial back, de-frazzle, take a breath, exhale slowly, repeat, start getting a sense of center, exhale again, slow the thoughts down, pick one thought of alrightness or goodness and stay with it, exhaling worry about the future, coming into this moment, just sensations, calming, mind getting clearer, focusing on what I’ll do this day and knowing that’s all I can do, the body sense of settling down yet again sinking in to make it one bit easier to settle down the next time. Leaving the Red Zone, not all the way to Green, more like Yellow, but no longer even Orange. Whew.

We all learned many way of avoiding the existential pain of life when we were growing up, because we could not manage feeling it when we were little. Now, as adults, most people continue to protect in the ways they learned, even though today, adults, we can learn to manage our core pain through Inner Bonding.

Most of our core pain comes from others being unloving to us or to themselves, disconnecting from us and from themselves. We all desire connection with those important to us, and we naturally feel these deeper painful feelings, especially when someone important to us disconnects from us with their own protections – their anger, blame, withdrawal, and so on.