Surrender and Thrive: Spiritual Insights for Personal Growth, Part One
EP. 10
In this episode of The Mae B Mindful Podcast, host Hannah Mae delves into the transformative power of surrender. Discover how letting go and embracing something greater than yourself can lead to inner peace and strength. Through personal anecdotes and spiritual insights, Hannah Mae explores the true meaning of surrender and its impact on our lives. Tune in to learn how to align with the flow of life and unlock your soul's evolution and growth.
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome back, my friends, to The Mae B Mindful Podcast. I am your host, Hannah Mae. We're going to chat a little bit about surrender. When you look up the word "surrender," a lot of people have this connotation. One definition that comes up is: "Cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority." That doesn't sound like a good idea. Who would want to surrender? I don't want to submit to the authority of my enemy—no thanks. I'm going to keep fighting this fight, even if it means depleting myself of energy and precious resources. Even if I'm losing, I'm going to keep fighting because I am not an idiot, and I value my life, my freedom, and my independence. I'm not going to surrender to the enemy. That's how a lot of people view surrender: strictly speaking, it means you lose, you are defeated. So that's not going to work if we keep viewing it that way.
You look at another explanation—just doing quick Google searches here—"give over the power, control, or possession to another, especially by force." We can start to sort of look at that and go, "Well, what is the force that's breaking us down? Why do we need to catch a break?" If you look at depression—I'm not talking about clinical depression, but regular, ordinary depression that many people experience to varying degrees—we become depressed when we need a break because what we're doing isn't working. The depression is actually a break that allows us, if you notice, after you've been in a little slump and the lull and rest of depression where you stop trying because you can't because you're defeated, you get new energy, fresh resolve, and you can go back to doing it again. But what happens if you go back to doing that thing and exerting that same effort that's not actually working for you? Well, you're going to end up depressed again, and this time your depression might be greater because the defeat will be bigger because it's yet another failed attempt.
Somebody showed me a definition of the word surrender, and it was actually—I don't know where they got it, but I thought it was good. It said, "No residual of battle; freedom and peace ensue." So surrender then is a letting go of perhaps an unnecessary fight. Some things are worth fighting for, right? Like we exert an incredible amount of effort and energy into something that requires and calls for endurance. But that's fighting for something, not fighting against something. There is a difference because sometimes these forces that we're fighting against we're no match for. And I'm speaking spiritually here and energetically. If we're not in accordance with something, if we're not in the flow of life, then we can come into conflict with just anything and everything. We can come into conflict with events, say, outside of us that don't align with our belief systems, the way we think we want them to. It can get a little convoluted here because we have a mind, we have a perception, we have the way we think we'd like something to go. It might not be the ultimate best case scenario just because we think it should go that way. You know what I'm saying? I know you know what I'm saying.
So, what's fighting? Is it love that's fighting? Are you fighting for love? Are you having to, say, work really hard through some problems and show up and go to counseling with your partner to save a relationship and work through your difficulties and work through your own stuff and clear your own trauma so that you can heal, so that you can be available for something beautiful? There's a fight there, right? There's a struggle, there's effort required. Or is your ego fighting? The ego says, "All this out there needs to look a certain way so that I can be okay, and I need to look a certain way so that you'll see me a certain way, so that everything can be okay. And you need to do this, this, and this so all these things happen, and this circumstance needs to play out like this, this, and this so that all these things can align and happen, and everything can be okay according to my script in my mind," right? How my hair is flopping around right now. So to let go of that and to go with the flow of life would be surrender. It would be no more fighting of the ego. It would be no more clashing of my will versus someone else's will or the Divine will as Providence would have it. If life is playing out a certain way and I'm fighting with that, then what am I actually fighting with? I'm fighting with what is.
So you could look at surrender here as acceptance. Surrender is the way to freedom, spiritually speaking. It's a softening, it's an allowing, it's a letting go, it's a trusting. But what are you going to trust? You can't just surrender unless you've got some good solid like something. You can't really surrender with these things, these big things that your security is dependent upon in your mind, whether they be false security structures or real. They're usually false, kids, just going to throw it out there. And the ego wants to uphold them. They come from our wounding, you know. They come from our best efforts. They come from us just wanting to survive. And these are instinctual desires and needs to be accepted, to be loved, you know, to be a part of. So we're going to need a real good safety net here if we're going to surrender, if we're going to let go, if we're going to trust fall, we're going to drop. We need to know we're going to be caught. And if we don't know we're going to be caught and we don't have any faith or trust, it would be like jumping to our death. And we're not going to do that. Like, we're smarter than that. I am. I'm smarter than that. The only problem is, the struggle isn't actually that intelligent because if I'm doing something over and over again, I'm fighting something that's yielding poor results and not the one that I want and not resulting in peace and a win. And the win might not be what I think it is either, by the way. Then I might want to look at trying something different or new. Well, and my way is not working based on the way I'm seeing something. Well, am I willing to soften, see things differently, move into acceptance of something?
This is not easy stuff. But if I don't do it, then I'm just going to stay in the same pattern with the same result. But the results will most likely get worse because I have this brilliant, bright spirit and subconscious that's like, we're going to keep drawing to the thing that's going to bring this problem up again and again until you're willing to soften and change and accept and find a new way, a better way, a higher way, and to see things from a higher perspective and to see things truthfully so that you can come into alignment with all with the best life possible that we want for you. That's what the soul says. It says we want so much more. We want to shine. We want to be bright. We want to fulfill the thing that we came here for, that we chose this life for, that we were chosen for. And there's no chance here. There's no luck. There's no such thing as luck. Luck's not a thing. I mean, you can believe it's a thing if you want. I'm just speaking my own belief here. I don't believe in luck. I don't believe in chance. I believe in Providence, and that's Divine Providence. Sometimes, in order to believe that and understand that, that can bring up a lot for people. There can be a lot to look at and face and come to terms with and gain understanding and peace and wisdom around because sometimes life can deal what looks like a pretty shitty hand or circumstance at any given moment, and it doesn't feel fair, and it doesn't seem just, and it doesn't seem right. And so then sometimes we think, well, why would I trust anybody other than myself if I'm leaving it up to Providence and that's happening? So there's things to explore there, and we can always gain a deeper understanding and clarity and wisdom when we get underneath these things and we see where these beliefs came from. They did not originate in us. I'd be willing to put money on it for anybody if they were born with that belief or idea. They won't find it if they were to go back into their consciousness and search it out. It's not part of their makeup. It's something that was learned. And we learn it through our experiences, through improperly processed events, through traumatic experience. And the beliefs that come out of those and these wounds that become entryways—our wounding is an entryway and a portal for these false beliefs, these limitations, this negative energy, whatever you want to call it, negative spiritual attachments, fear—to come in and take hold and start to warp and distort our thinking. Protective parts of ourselves, there's so many different ways and language and whatever it is that aligns for you. Malignant energy, demons, whatever you want to call it. Okay? It's false ideas. It's not the truth. And it's not something you were born with. And so these parts of ourselves rise up to protect us valiantly because they want what's best for us. So we have to watch out for ourselves, right? We've got to watch out for ourselves. We've got to have our back. But then those things hamper us because they end up restricting, confining, suppressing, and not allowing free expression of our spirit and our essence and truth, who we are in the world. And then we're faced with this horrible, horrible thought ultimately of when I die—it's like the biggest fear—when I die, will I not have lived fully? Will I not have loved fully? Will I not have done the things that were on my heart to do, that were put there, that are like these gems that were just dropped in from the beginning, like these loves? If you look back at your life, if you question what you want to do in your life and you don't know and you don't know what you're passionate about, maybe you're apathetic and you're cut off. Look back to when you were little. It's amazing to me. I look back to when I was little, and there was a good stretch of time where I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked. I didn't know what I was good at. And when I started to wake up to myself again, I was like, wow, the things that I love and the things that I'm passionate about that excite me, it's all the same things as when I was like 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Same stuff. It's who I am. It's who God made me. Part of my gifting. There's gifting in it, and there's gifting in there. And our gifting, one of my teachers said to me, our gifts are the things that we tend to discard because we just take them for granted because they just come so naturally to us that we don't even look at them as gifts. But other people can see them in us and go, wow, you know. And we don't have to try. We don't have to overexert ourselves. They just flow right out and through us. And the less restricted and the more trusting and in surrender to that process and creativity—the creative process takes relaxation, right? And we're all creative, just saying. Anyways, I'm sort of getting sidetracked here. It's what happens to me in my brain.
So, if we go back and we take it back to trusting, surrendering. If we can't trust ourselves, and when I say self, I mean lower self, ego, those parts of us that I was just mentioning before that are just like trying to survive, that are most likely wounded, that are scared, that are fear-driven, the parts of us that are fear-driven, that's not true self. True self is in alignment with—and these terms are synonymous to me—Spirit, Soul, God, higher self, it's all the same thing. And when we connect with that, it's like this ever-expansive sea of power and love that we can tap into and access, and we can access that within ourselves. And that is our greatest resource. That's our own inner resource. That is the Kingdom of Heaven is within. It's not like some faraway place, it's within. We can access it. We can begin to access that now and access that power. So if we don't have the needed power and we're trusting and relying and we're relying on our own finite thinking and human perspective, and then there's this alternative, there's this creative, greater, higher intelligence and knowing that maybe you don't have a personal or intimate relationship with yet because there's things blocking because you might need to do some trust exercises, sort of ease your way into that. You can't just jump straight in. Like, you got to sort of warm up. Like, you're not going to marry someone unless you've at least been on a few dates, hopefully more than a few. Like, you want to get to know this person. You want to spend time with them. You want to get feedback. You want to know how they see you. You want to know how they value you. You want to know and experience that as truth, not just in your mind because that would just be a fantasy relationship. That wouldn't be a real relationship, like an actual experience.
Someone told me—I didn't even read this—someone told me a Wayne Dyer metaphor around, I think it was around faith in God. And it was, the only way to know what a mango tastes like is to eat the mango. Somebody could explain it to you how wonderful it is. I mean, if you like mangoes. I love mangoes. But nobody could explain that to you and translate that in a way that's experiential. You have to have that experience for yourself. And so the moment we become open and willing to seek that experience and connect with a relationship with something that's bigger than us, then we can begin. We can begin that process. We step foot onto that path, and then we engage in that. And then, you know, once we can trust that, we can trust a little more.
The relationship metaphor is bringing up this for me. When I met my husband, he adored me from the moment he saw me. Truly, he was like, "Wow." And I was like, "What?" And he would say really nice things to me. I really loved his spirit. I wanted to be near him because I just felt like this kindred connection. And it wasn't even like a sexual connection yet at all. It was just, I was like, I felt safe with him. He felt safe to me. And he would say these really nice things to me. He would say, like, really nice things, things that nobody had said to me before. Like, he would tell me I was the most beautiful person he'd ever met. And my reaction, truly, I was like, it took me about six weeks of him pouring this on. Literally, my response was like, I was looking at him sideways, and I had to keep a distance for quite a while because I was like, what's his angle? What does he want? And why is he saying that? But then, eventually, I came to believe that he actually really believed that. I was like, oh. He consistently showed up the same way, and his actions backed his words. And I slowly started to trust this person. And a relationship was not something that I really knew how to have at that point. So it took—I mean, he, you know, so it took a little bit of baby-stepping. I mean, not a little, a lot. Like, I joke that he baby-stepped me down the altar. You know what I mean? I was like, oh, are we really going to do this? I was very commitment-phobic. But that was the foundation of our relationship. And that's the thing is, we have to, in any relationship, if we want it to be strong, we want to build it from the ground up and have a strong foundation.
So we have to meet ourselves where we're at with this. If you're going to surrender, then you need to be able to surrender to something that's bigger than you. You're your own best friend here. You're your own best resource. You're the one that knows what you want. You're the one with the willpower that you can access at any time, right? Whether it's working or not. And nobody else can probably do this for you because people are going to let you down. Because that's what people do. They're great at letting you down. They're great for showing up, but they're also great for letting you down. It's just, you know, welcome to life. They have themselves to take care of. And that's our job. Our job is to show up for ourselves, ultimately.
I had someone say to me, we come in alone and we're going to go out alone. So we need to get okay in life being alone. And how do we be okay being alone? I need connection. I need deep, meaningful inner connection. Otherwise, it feels a little scary to me. And I love being alone as a result of that. So I'm not ultimately going to surrender this big stuff to another person. They can't really handle that. That's not their job. But if it's not me and I'm needing a new way, then I need to be able to access something that can solve all these problems, that can provide everything I need to sustain me in the ways that I need. And when I run out and I can't do that on my own, I'm going to reach a place, which I have, where I'm like, wow, I need more. This is not enough for me. I want more. I want more. I want freedom. So spiritual surrender is the way to freedom. But I need to be able to at least first lay aside those things that are blocking me and meet myself honestly where I'm at. Honestly, honestly where I'm at. So what is that? You know, how do you access that? That is a conversation. And that is deep work. It's beautiful work. It can be done. It can be done very quickly, and it can be done so simply. Simply in our minds, it's this great big obstacle. But in practical action and practice, it's just a moment of truth is all it is. And then we've made this connection. And then we can go from there and grow that relationship.
But the spiritual surrender is the way out. It's flow. It's getting with the flow of life, and it's accepting things as they come and not resisting. And it's accepting life as it presents. There's no problems. The only problem is the way I'm perceiving it. Nothing on the outside is the problem. My problem is in my head. Doesn't mean I don't take action. Doesn't mean I just lay down and I'm steamrolled by everything in life, right? It's the opposite. It means I get power. It means I learn how to take care of myself where I didn't before. And whatever your struggle is, wherever you fall short, we can rely on this resource. Whatever that strength is that we're needing, we can rely on that to supply that force if we know how to access it. This is this Wellspring within. And this is why people find God. This is why people seek a spiritual connection. There's a reason why people choose their different practices, religious or spiritual. But ultimately, it has to go deep. It can't just be of the mind. Otherwise, it's just a conviction. It's just a belief. Then it's just a belief that's just flying around with all the other beliefs.
So I could talk about this stuff all day, clearly, but I'm going to leave it there. I love you guys. And I think if I can leave you with anything, because a lot of people say, like, how do I do that? You do that simply by getting curious, by meeting yourself where you're at and starting wherever you are. What is the doubt? What is the block? What is the thing that you're wanting? What is the freedom that you're wanting? If you were going to trust, what does that look like? And if you were going to trust, what would that need to be? And are you open to seeing things differently? Because that space needs to be open if something's going to come in. If something new is going to come in, we've got to open that space and clear out what's not been working. Like, if your phone stops working, you're not going to sit there for seven more years trying to make your phone work and get your screen to turn on. You're going to solve that problem pretty quick. You're going to do what works because you can't live without your phone. You can't live without that connection. We're very dependent. We're very reliant upon that. You need that connection. And so this spiritual lifeline is that important. It's more important because that's the thing that's going to provide everything you need that nobody else can provide.
I'm so grateful for the defeat that I've experienced in my life, the struggles, the various addictions, the inability to solve certain problems and have defeat because those things have pushed me into a place, by sheer necessity, to have to find a new way. And so to surrender and to accept and allow spiritual help is the most incredible resource and gift I believe we have. And then to grow in that relationship and evolve that understanding is an incredible thing. So many gifts, so much more magical, it's so much more exciting than, like, things on the physical plane because that makes us superhuman. That's some serious superpower there that we can all access.
Anyways, I'll shut up now. Love you guys. Have a great week. Until next time.