While listening to Mark Nepo (Author of The Book of Awakening) talking to Oprah on Sirius Radio, he shared a moment in his life where he had lost his job, had an unknown illness and was going to confront his father he had been estranged from. He was afraid, in fear or in the unknown in the past, present and future, so he went deeper and sat with his soul.
I understood completely, for when my life turned upside down and my past seemed to horrifying to look at, the future a vast landscape of empty and unknown and the present was littered with my father’s rubbish…I too went deeper and found my soul.
I didn’t call it my soul, but now I know that is where I went.
A place that was untouched by time and events, but it was calm and knowing, a Self I had never met.
I remember feeling this very deep calm knowing and strength, although I had no idea where it came from in the midst of such a churning moment in my life.
Everything was falling down around me and I was deep beneath it all learning incredible lessons and seeing things that no one else could see.
I get this; I had connected with my soul when my life fell apart. What I now know is that when your past, present and future fall down, you get left standing in the unchanging part of you, the place that survives all life experiences.
I went from living in time, to being timeless. Time was too fearful to be in.
What I also know is that once you take your self out of time, or are shocked and flung out of your life, you can see things from a deeper and wider view, prior to that I was tangled up in time and had no deeper perspective.
I dwelled in the land of time without a connection to the deep well of wisdom, my soul.
I love that I have this explanation.
One other thing he mentioned that really connected with me was that “Surrender doesn’t mean giving up, it means going with the Flow.”
He explained that you have to flow all the way through whatever experience you are in in order to get the full lesson. That giving up isn’t the answer, but being in it fully… going in all the way. Accepting what is.
Mostly I have heard that surrender is giving up or just letting it be, but I hadn’t heard that it means heading in fully.
That is exactly how I faced my life situations after my father’s arrest. I didn’t duck, I didn’t hide and I didn’t deny.
Instead I walked fully into each moment of time, but I had this wonderful deep intimate connection with my soul, I never walked alone; I was connected to a place outside of time.
(What a great hour listening to him talk. I bought his book, but gave it to a friend; I am thinking I need one for me.)