Surrender and Truth - Coming to Ojai

I like doing things, arriving at events,(even my teaching job, although that is hardly an event,) at the last minute. I'm not exactly late for stuff, more on the edge of late if that makes sense; if I were to examine my tendency on a psychological level I would have to say my potential tardiness gives me a sense of freedom and control. I like the idea of being the one to decide when I will arrive at prearranged activities. It's my way of bucking predetermination.

My original plan was to arrive at Ojai at the last possible moment - breeze in on Friday morning, sign books at Bhavantu that afternoon, and hear Erich talk that night. I certainly wasn't going to arrive for any early day of a yoga immersion class. I definitely wasn't going to follow Kira's advice - Kira is the brilliant woman who hosts the crib each year - and arrive a day early to register and get situated. Such would be against my established habit; my unconscious desire to take myself to that edge of feeling rushed and harried.

Then it started raining in Los Angeles. I don't like driving in the rain, especially not long distances. For me the trip from the South Bay to Ojai is a long distance. And a still, soft voice within kept telling me to take an extra day off teaching, to organize myself, to get into Ojai a day early, to allow myself the pleasure of the immersion class before things go into full swing on Friday.

There was a two hour window when the rain stopped this morning. I resisted the word "surrender" whispering through my being, told myself I'd heard that word plenty of times before and I didn't need to surrender any further. Why must we keep surrendering to the truth of what's happening anyways? Shouldn't once or once in a while be enough?

That's when it occurred to me how much of what I've been doing, at school and at home, has involved me telling everyone else what I want them to do, orchestrating my environment and my own movements in it like a puppet master, constantly pulling and pushing things regardless of how they really are.

What was required was a shift in my own frame of mind, a surrender to the reality that I am not the one in control of when and how things happen. It sounds silly but I had to admit to myself I can't control if and when it rains, or the traffic patterns out of Los Angeles during rush hour. If I wanted a smooth ride to Ojai, I would have to leave early.

It's helpful to shift our mental paradigms about what we are doing and how we are doing it in order to hook into the truth. That shift involves surrender - a relinquishing of the ego self into the way things are, a recognition of the reality that we are not the ones running the show here. After all, the truth is all there ever was and ever will be anyway. We can hear that voice of truth deep within ourselves, the voice that is beyond our silly mental gyrations and thinking, when we surrender.

I'm here at Ojai early; well rested, having skated up here easily in between rain storms. I'm exited to take the immersion class with Erich tomorrow.

I'm working on surrender.