This quick and easy-to-read book of humorous vignettes, taken from the author's’ daily life, provides readers with profound yet practical strategies to personally explore everyday occurrences. Readers are coached to step into their own authenticity, while embracing ambiguity and a sense of the unknown. Building on the book entitled, “Rushing to Yoga,” this book delves into a deeper level of self-exploration and personal insight. It is a must-read for anyone who is questioning their own sense of purpose.
Life’s experiences come at you whether you think you can control them or not. They come at you sometimes in attack and sometimes in exuberant joy. Sometimes, life experiences knock you on your back and other times they have you swinging around for joy or swinging around in anxiety, anticipating that you will be flung into a wall and broken into pieces, far too many pieces to ever hope of putting back together again.
Surrendering is letting go of the belief that I can control what life tosses my way. Surrendering is letting go of the belief that I can manage what life throws at me. Sometimes, no amount of reasoning, communication, or understanding changes anything I experience. Surrendering means letting go of managing all that is around me. In letting go of managing, I let go of the excess of that which is not mine to tend to and thus, that which is not me; that which does not resonate with my authenticity.
Surrendering is accepting. Acceptance is the realization that I can choose to be deeply wounded by the experiences of life or I can choose to recognize that obstacles causing permanent damage can be removed, buffered, or rendered non-existent. That which causes pain can be let go. That which distracts me from my authentic expression of joy, love, and peace can be let go.
Nothing in life is controllable. Acceptance of that is not passive; it involves a deep awareness of what I know and what I don’t know, what I feel and what I don’t feel, and what I see and what I don’t see. Acceptance involves, as Mark Nepo describes, living away the excess so that the soul can return to its authenticity of love, joy, and peace. Surrendering is accepting who I am and who I am not and being open to whom I am becoming. However, do I hear the call to become authentic? And if I hear it, will I surrender to that call? Will I have the courage to face all that I am not to discover all that I am and am becoming?
Marilee J. Bresciani, PhD is professor of postsecondary education at San Diego State University. In order to keep from going crazy with trying to get the public to care about what students are actually learning, she has sought yoga and meditation. Marilee''s mantra is, “I teach what I need to learn.”