🙋🏻♀️ A Broken Arm, Losing Control, & Feeling the Power of Surrender
Surrender is one of the most misunderstood teachings on the spiritual path.
It is simple - and it is not easy.
People often hear the word surrender and imagine passivity, collapse, or giving up. But true surrender isn’t resignation. It isn’t defeat. And it isn’t pretending everything is fine.
Surrender is what remains when every illusion of control falls away and you come face-to-face with what is actually true.
There’s a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert that I love -
‘You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control.
But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.’
And it lands because we each have experienced this at some point…
We grip, manage, strategize, anticipate, and over-function because the alternative feels terrifying. But that terror isn’t about reality - it’s about the collapse of the illusion that we were ever in charge. As Adyashanti says:
‘Fear arises when you realize you have no control but haven’t yet given up the desire for control.’
Yep… That’s the hinge point.
The world teaches us to cling.
Yet the soul teaches us to release.
And the path of real inner work sits right between the two.
And this is truly the curriculum of a lifetime.
One of the most powerful scenes of surrender in my life
In our live trainings and in my 1;1 work, I often ask students to keep a notebook - or a note in their phone - where they capture the scenes in their life that shifted something within. Scenes they can ‘drink from’ before meditation to remind their system of a truth they don’t want to forget.
One of the scenes on my personal list is the morning I experienced a compound fracture.
It happened in a split second - I landed in such a way that my elbow shattered, and the bone was protruding through the crease of my arm. My forearm was hanging backwards. And I was completely naked on the floor, unable to move without searing, electric pain.
It took nearly 90 minutes for EMTs to arrive.
In that time, there was no posture I could shift into, no breath I could deepen, no mental strategy I could use. I couldn’t tense around the pain, and I couldn’t move away from it. I couldn’t distract myself or attempt to fix anything.
There was absolutely no control available to me - not even a molecule of it.
And what happened next surprised me more than the accident itself.
The NANOSECOND that I stopped trying to control anything, the space around me completely filled with a palpable, overwhelming field of love.
And as I write this to you now in real time, what I’m being reminded of to adjust and correct is that the sentence isn’t fully accurate.
Because the field didn’t ‘suddenly appear.’
What’s truer is;
That Field is ever-present.
It is always here - the ground of Being itself which is palpable Love.
Everything else I described - the gripping, the bracing, the mental commentary, the fear, the resistance, the urgency, the identity - those are the barriers that we fill the space with that cover it up from ourselves. They are what create static between us and the direct experience of what is always, already available.
When those barriers were stripped away - not by spiritual effort, but by sheer circumstance - the Field became perceptible. Not because It arrived, but because the noise dropped. The defensive layers collapsed. The strategies fell away. And what remained was what had been there all along.
This is the truly paradox of Surrender;
We don’t create peace.
We uncover it.
We don’t generate love.
We stop interfering with it.
We don’t ‘find’ Presence.
We fall into what is never absent.
When I let my mind grip, I felt agony.
When I stayed in the open, surrendered space, there was peace. A remarkable, literally BLISSFUL spacious peace - in the midst of this sudden and bizzaro ‘medical emergency.’
And, It continued in the ambulance.
It continued in the hospital.
It continued into surgery.
One EMT in particular still texts me now and again to this day to talk about it.
An ER Nurse I run into occasionally still remember the palpable Field in the room.
Everyone in my sphere was as stunned and deeply touched by the vibration as I was. I didn’t cause It. It revealed ItSelf, and the natural radiance of Being could actually be felt.
This is why Surrender is one of the most potent teachings we’re ever offered.
Not because it eliminates difficulty - it definitely doesn’t - but because it reveals what difficulty cannot touch.
So, why does Surrender matter so much on the spiritual path?
Well, let’s remember that we are all Spiritual Beings having Human Experiences here at this School of Earth. Where the primary objective is to learn and unlearn, to heal, to evolve , to flourish, to thrive , to be useful, to enjoy , to explore , and to serve.
Surrender is NOT weakness, collapse, resignation, or checking out of life.
Surrender is the moment we stop arguing with reality and meet life as It Is, not as we want it to be.
Surrender is what allows love to arise in the space you occupy.
Surrender is what allows love to move at the speed of clarity.
And, Surrender is what allows wisdom to guide next steps.
It is the opposite of being passive.
It is the foundation of real action!!!
This is the same teaching at the heart of ‘Polishing the Character of your Character.’
When we stop being hijacked by the personality’s (ego’s) frantic need to manage everything, something deeper in us becomes available - steadier, wiser, and more Real.
Control absolutely belongs to the personality.
And, Surrender belongs to the soul.
And we need both.
We live in a world where action matters - planning, choosing, responding, showing up.
Yet when control becomes our ‘god’, we lose access to the deeper intelligence inside us.
Real freedom comes when we let life move through us, not when we muscle our way through life.
So, here’s an invitation for this week;
If you want to explore Surrender in a grounded way, explore (often) this simple inquiry:
? Where am I gripping right now?
? And what am I afraid would happen if I let go?
Not as judgment - simply as an observation.
Let your Wisdom Self reveal to you:
where you’re tightening around an old story
where fear is masquerading as responsibility
where you are trying to control the uncontrollable
where you could soften just 1%
Surrender does not ask for a leap!!!
It asks for a softening…
One breath.
One unclench.
One moment of letting reality be what it already is.
And in that softening, something larger can and will start to hold you.
If you feel called to share:
? What scene in YOUR Precious Life taught you something about surrender or control?
We would love to hear the wisdom you’ve earned. And what you take the time to share may truly be exactly what somebody needs to hear today.
You can reply here or join the conversation in the FB Group
With UnReasonable Love,
🙋🏻♀️
xoDaniela
