The Inevitable
Beyond suffering, surrender, and other strategies of the spiritual ego
“I do not know music theory, I do still enjoy and surrender to the beauty of it (music).
Shiv, If you could in later posts talk about “Surrender” and if it plays any part in the spiritual realm.”
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The problem with words like ‘surrender’ that have been inherited into the lexicon of secular spirituality from their Judeo-Christian roots - is that there is a subtle implication of ‘virtuousness’ embedded within them.
Virtues, in all their forms - including compassion, surrender, humility, harmony, grace, and peace - are the building blocks of the spiritual ego. And the spiritual ego’s construction is aimed at serving one purpose and one purpose alone - not to elevate the individual but to incarcerate every shadow element and vice behind an impenetrable fortress of unconsciousness, and thereby project an image of progression.
Surrender feels painful yet noble. There is a hue of martyrdom, a hint of sacrifice, a tinge of humility, a whisper of magnanimity within it. Surrendering to god, to the divine, to what-is - sounds grand doesn’t it? Especially for an identity that is languishing in the purgatory of a mundane, unremarkable, largely meaningless, and mostly painful existence - surrender sounds like a pretty neat strategy.
Surrender becomes just another means for escaping reality and constructing a new heroic arc - one in which we become the humbled prodigal children at last returning to the house of our father. Or in more secular terms, “letting go of the separate self and surrendering to what-is”.
‘Surrender’ thus becomes yet another strategy for winning at this game of life.
True surrender, however, is not a strategy - it is an unplanned outcome. It is synonymous with total and utter defeat.
There is nothing noble or virtuous about defeat. Nothing aspirational about its experience. Defeat just sucks. Plain and simple. And it is difficult to turn defeat into a strategy. Because you simply cannot win if you have lost.
Surrender implies choice, will. It implies “we are choosing to give up”. It implies it is we who have made the magnanimous decision to lay down our arms and wave the white flag of truce. Surrender is a diplomatic negotiation with life/god/universe.
It says, “How’s this? I’ll give up my kingdom for access to yours. I’ll give up all my land and titles if you allow me to act as your representative.”
Defeat can do none of this - because you cannot choose it. You can only be defeated. It puts you in absolutely no position to negotiate for better terms. It strips you of your honor, your title, your territory, your kingdom and in return it gives you - nothing.
Since you asked about ‘surrender’ and what role it appears to play in spirituality, this clarification is essential. From here on - any time I refer to the word - understand that I use it as synonymous with defeat. Not some privileged albeit painful experience of grace. But the absolute loss of everything we have deemed of value.
The Voice
There is a voice in your head that claims it is you.
It carries your name. It can recount the past. It can relive memories. It can imagine a future.
It claims people, things and spaces in your life as its own. It claims experiences, thoughts, emotions and feelings as its own. It creates a clear boundary marking the territory of ‘your life’ within the greater territory of ‘life’ - much like one might mark a plot of land ‘my home’ within the greater territory of a nation.
Its sole preoccupation is the preservation, expansion, improvement and beautification of this territory. It is perpetually tending to its fences to ensure its land is not being encroached on. It is constantly upgrading, renovating, improving, developing.
You are that territory. An acreage of awareness. A piece of sentient real-estate that is under development.
And this voice has convinced you that a plot of land is all you are. It has convinced you that you must be protected, you must be developed, you must be expanded, you must be constantly ploughed, healed, and kept fertile. For if you are not…
Your fences will be broken, your structure will fall into disrepair, your land will crack and turn arid - and eventually your freedom to exist as an independent sovereign territory will be stolen from you.
And so the voice claims it is your servant - here to serve you, protect you, grow you, heal you, expand you - but most importantly to ensure your freedom.
But what distinguishes one territory from another other than the line that has been used to divide them? Do the roots of the trees that grow in your yard not creep into the neighbor’s? Do the maggots and earthworms that feed on the detritus in your soil and thereby enrich it not also enrich your neighbor’s? Does the snow that falls on your roof not also fall on all the roofs in the neighborhood? And when a storm ravages the town, does it spare the homes of the virtuous?
Does the earth divide itself into territories? Or is it a single unified mass?
You have been convinced that you are but a ‘piece of awareness’ but what evidence do you have that awareness segregates itself?
The voice speaks in the language of doublethink. It calls fear - love. It calls bondage - freedom. It calls dis-ease - healing. It calls status quo - improvement. It calls control - empowerment.
And its pièce de résistance is to frame the totality as a threat to your existence as an individual. It is like saying the earth is a threat to your territory - and that if you are not always exerting effort in maintaining its boundaries, the earth will rush in and consume this territory. Like a jungle rushing in and reclaiming an abandoned city.
And so your experience of life is like a bubble of existence floating inside a fluid - always afraid of the pressures that may cause the bubble to pop. And thus, you exert pressure outwards in proportion to the pressures you imagine are acting against you.
The great irony is - true freedom is not the assertion of the sovereignty of one’s own territory but to recognize the earth’s own indivisible sovereignty. Not to assert the freedom of ‘my life’ but to realize that life alone is inherently free. Not to seek liberation for one’s awareness but to see that awareness is already liberated the moment such segregation is seen as artificial.
In other words, that entire superstructure of ‘reality’ that the voice has constructed has to be dismantled and demolished.
Yet, that is easier said than done. Because you cannot do it.
You are just a puppet. Merely the voice’s mouthpiece. Its arms, its legs, its feelings, its thoughts, its worldview.
Every one of your strategies are just the voice’s strategies.
The voice is a brilliant strategist. The moment its propaganda is seen through, it adapts.
It says, “yes, it is true that I have been misleading you. But it has been for your own good. Of course, you are not only this piece of land - you are the whole of it! Of course, I know that - and I would gladly retreat and return you to what you rightfully are. But alas! The other voices don’t know that! They still walk around as if their territories are who they are. It is their madness that I am protecting you from! For if you remove the borders of your land, it is your neighbor who will claim it!”
And then, when even this piece of propaganda begins to unravel:
“The only way is to surrender. We will offer this territory as a tribute to the divine in return for its protection. The universe will see this gesture as a sign of your depth and dignity and will in turn have your back. It will protect you from all those other parasitic voices that move the men and women of this world. It will shield you from their greed and exploitation with the sheer force of its love. It will blind them with its enlightenment so that they have no choice but to bow to you with respect or at least leave you in peace. After that I will leave you alone. I will only remain as a servant and to ensure that you are taken care of.”
Through every kind of rhetoric - it subtly restates the separation of the territory of ‘your life’ from the kingdom of life - and perpetually reinstates itself as the arbitrator between the two in one way or another.
It is that voice that must be defeated. Not surrendered. And you cannot defeat it - because you are its mouthpiece.
Only life can do it. And it does so on many levels - somatic, emotional, and intellectual.
The Architecture of Defeat
What does defeat feel like?
When does it feel like you are losing at life?
When you are suffering is it not?
What are the forms suffering can take on?
At the level of the physical body - suffering looks like decay - pain, illness, disease, injury, death.
At the level of our emotional and relational selves - suffering looks like loss - of power, prestige, relationships, love, respect, relevance.
At the level of the intellect - suffering looks like disillusionment - confusion, doubt, crumbling beliefs, fragmenting identity, shattering narratives.
Three forms of defeat that map to the three apparatuses through which life is experienced - the mind, the heart, and the body. These form the three dimensions of our territory we call ‘my life’.
The voice dominates them all.
Life, unbeknownst to you, quietly dismantles the voice through this three-pronged approach. It exposes it to the inevitability of decay - of illness, injury and death - in a way that is utterly unavoidable. It subjects it to sudden and often unexplainable loss - of love, reputation, power - in a way that disarms its vice-like grip over the heart. It infiltrates it with unpredictable periods of disillusionment - of confusion, meaninglessness, loss of identity - and wrests away its control over the intellect.
Yet, the voice, the ever-adaptable shape-shifter that it is - keeps itself alive with the narrative of victimhood. It calls such experiences “suffering”. Rather than framing them as attacks upon its own legitimacy, it instead legitimizes them as “opportunities for growth”. It rises from the debris of its own bombardment and calls itself ‘spiritually transformed’.
No longer a victim of life - but an ally. Not its enemy, but its vassal.
It speaks the language of surrender in order to avoid defeat.
Yet, where the voice is adaptable, life is inevitable. And adaptability is no match for inevitability. For that which can adapt to the inevitable can no longer remain separate from it.
The voice’s entire existence is predicated upon the assumption of its separation from life - however subtle. If not as an enemy, then as a vassal. If not as a vassal, then as a subject. If not as a subject, then as a servant. If not as a servant, then as a child of the divine. If not as a child, then as a spark of that flame. As a wave of its ocean. As a dream of its dreamer…
On and on its narrative of duality goes - because duality is what allows it to exist as a discrete entity alongside that which is.
Inevitability
Inevitability is not a strategy. It is what is.
The apparent war that life rages upon the voice is not an intentional one - nor is it even ‘a war’ in the usual sense of the word. It is war when perceived from the perspective of the voice - but in reality it is simply business-as-usual.
Just as when a city is abandoned, the forest gradually encroaches upon it and takes it over - not because the jungle is waging a war on the city - but because the city is an artifice that can only exist as long as the natural laws of the jungle are held at bay. In much the same way - decay, loss, and disillusionment - are how we experience the territory of our controlled lives being taken over by the inevitability of what is.
Suffering is our response to that inevitability. And so, suffering acts as a gauge that measures our relationship with inevitability.
Suffering acts as the friction point between the narrative of our own sovereignty and the inevitability of what is.
And the voice is fueled by that friction.
Yet, its ultimate defeat does not come in the form of fireworks - of great tragedy, of tremendous loss, of dark confusion - it comes in the form of a shift so subtle it is almost comical.
When the inevitability of life is truly seen - not just glimpsed, not just understood, not just grasped - but truly seen as plain as the light of day - something remarkable happens…
The voice realizes that it too is inevitable. That while it believed it was puppeteering you - it was being puppeteered.
The ultimate defeat does not come from surrender but the realization that this great battle it had believed it was fighting never even took place.
The Aftermath
Summer grass
The dreams of ancient warriors
Leave no trace
-Matsuo Basho
What is is.
This is inevitability.
The voice is.
Its artifice is.
Its control disguised as sovereignty is.
Its resistance to life is.
The casualties it suffers and calls ‘suffering’ is.
Its attempts to surrender and spiritually transform itself is.
Its realization of its own redundancy is.
Its narrative of its hero’s journey is.
The evaporation of that narrative is.
There is nothing that the inevitability does not include.
Then what is there to surrender?
Speechless!
"Suffering acts as the friction point between the narrative of our own sovereignty and the inevitability of what is." Wow.