Surrender and Serve: The Yin and Yang of Spiritualizing Your Worldly Life
If you’re dedicated to a spiritual path, you don’t need to renounce your life and retreat to a temple.
You can bring the temple to you by spiritualizing your daily existence. In each moment, as events unfold, you practice either surrender or selfless service. These become life’s two overarching purposes, like Yin and Yang.
Surrender is Yin. It’s not about being passive, letting others trample you, or having weak boundaries. Surrender is respecting and honoring people and things as they are, recognizing their right to unfold exactly as they do. It’s the humility to admit the ego’s understanding is limited compared to the universe’s vast intelligence, yet too proud to confess it.
Surrender is a mudra, a stance you hold toward the world, embodying mindful non-resistance. Like water, it’s soft, flexible, accepting, and embracing. Picture an eagle soaring effortlessly without flapping its wings.
Selfless service is Yang, blending non-action and action. It’s non-action because it renounces acting from inner lack to fulfill selfish desires, instead offering pure action unswayed by the ego. It aims to serve the highest good, which includes the one acting.
Selfless service detaches from outcomes; the action itself is an offering to God or the energy of pure kindness. Crucially, it’s the right action taken regardless of inner feelings. You can’t always control how you feel or think when samskaras are triggered, but you can choose to act kindly, wielding your willpower rightly.
By practicing both Yin and Yang, the world becomes your dojo for spiritual growth. Each moment offers a chance to surrender or serve, transforming daily life into a sacred practice.
The blend of action and non-action is essential in a Western World that glorifies the grind.
I learned something new today thank you!
"You can’t always control how you feel or think when samskaras are triggered"
I have never heard of samskaras, so naturally I took a minute to look it up..
It's so interesting to read about that subject!! And also how to heal them!!
Thank you for all of the amazing healing work you do!! I love reading your articles!! I feel like I really learn so much from them!! It helps me understand myself alot more!!