Time to surrender

The last few days have seen plenty of posts about the full moon. How to manage your energy during full moon, why you may be feeling a bit loopy right about now, and how to use the beauty of the moon to manifest your dreams. Whilst I love the beauty and power of the full moon, and notice that my dreams tend to be a bit wackier than usual, what strikes me is that the full moon is also an opportunity surrender. To look up into the vast sky, to marvel at the pure expansiveness that we are all part of it, and to realise that we are not so alone in our problems, worries and fears, because there are also plenty of other people gazing up at that moon right now. We can sigh, open our arms and hearts, drink in the moonlight, and surrender.

This week, I have had to surrender big time for more reasons than the moon. I have finished my freelance job, my security blanket not only in pay cheque but in the love and compassion I have been surrounded with from the people who work there. And I have a big family event coming up, which will see me face people who were such a huge part of my childhood, but whom I have little (if any) contact with now.

Those of you who have read my other blogs will know a little about my background, so I won’t repeat it all here, but put to put it simply, tomorrow the past that I have pushed away for so many years is going to be staring me right in the face. All day long.

My response to this has been weird. I have hit the carbs pretty hard that’s for sure – eating toast and granola until my feeling of discomfort and tension is felt in the belly, rather than the heart, blocking out the emotional discomfort that has felt harder to deal with that that feeling of binge eating. I have got headaches, and stiff shoulders and I have slept. A lot. I decided a couple of weeks ago that this was going to be hard for me, and so I booked in some sessions to ‘warrior’ myself up: hairdressers, new shoes, appointments with an energy healer. They might not seem like they go hand in hand, but trust me, the more you begin to shed the layers you have accumulated over the years, the more vulnerable you are. When you feel safe, secure and well, vulnerability is cool. When you’re putting yourself into a situation when you feel out of control, you need to done that mask (preferably with an excellent make up job).

To add to the fear, worry and tension, there have of course also been feelings of guilt. Guilt for the overeating (not very yogic, I scold myself), guilt for letting this get to me (how much more healing do I need, I criticise myself) and guilt that my response is to need to create a mask. Here’s the thing: the guilt thing isn’t real. It doesn’t matter how I react. Sure, it’s great if I can take care of myself, and do the best I can, but there is no ideal way I can handle this because it’s out of my control. I can’t know for sure what’s going to happen, and as the old samskaras arise (yogic word for old patterns, repressed behaviours) I start to repeat my defence mechanism that I had as a child: food. The food might now be wheat free, organic granola, coconut yoghurt and spelt rye bread, but it doesn’t matter, the old habits are back, and they’ll probably stay here until I feel I have some control again.

Even that comes with a caveat. We are never in control. We can try to control, we can pretend, but on a scale of 1 to 100, we’re probably in control of about 000.1% of things in our life. The rest, we have to simply surrender to. Surrender to the events that have happened to us, to the traumas and tension in our bodies, to our destructive habits – like overeating and guilt – and the fact that sometimes we have to do things we don’t really want to do, and be with people we don’t really want to see. Life wasn’t meant to be easier. But we can make it a bit easier for ourselves for letting go of the guilt, the shame and the embarrassment and just surrendering it to, in all its imperfectations.

And whilst we bow down in surrender, we can continue to look up to the stars and the moon above. And remember that though we may not feel perfect, the universe which we belong to and are part of, most certainly is.