Meditation Insights: Surrender

Have you ever heard or read those spiritual teachings asking us to surrender: surrender to our pain, or to a situation?

I have, many times.

To me it has always been something that “looks good on paper”, but very hard to do in reality.

However, today that might have changed for me.

It all started with my decision to meditate by the ocean—a place where I can feel deeply connected to nature and find peace within myself. As I sat on the sand, focusing on my breath and the rhythm of the waves crashing nearby, the wind was getting hard to ignore. I was wearing a sweater and everything, but after a while, I was starting to feel uncomfortable.

The cold became the focal point of my awareness. My attention moved from the calming sound of the waves to my growing discomfort. "I want to go home" I thought.

But I hadn’t meditated long enough to feel fully settled.

Then, in the midst of this mental struggle wether to stay or go, I had an insight. What if I just surrendered to the cold? What if I allowed myself to fully feel it, rather than fighting against it? It was as if the thought appeared in my mind like a soft whisper, inviting me to explore this uncomfortable sensation in a new way.

So, I did what felt counterintuitive at the time: I let go of my resistance to the cold. I consciously stopped trying to change the situation, and instead, I allowed myself to experience the discomfort without judgment. In that moment, my entire approach shifted. I stopped fighting the sensation of the wind and simply allowed it to be there.

The discomfort started to dissipate. The wind kept blowing just the same, but my experience of it completely changed. I wasn’t tensing up in response to it anymore. Instead, I felt a sense of ease that I hadn’t expected.

This simple moment of surrender held such a powerful lesson for me. When we fight against something—whether it’s an external situation or our own internal discomfort—we create resistance. And in that resistance, we inadvertently create more suffering. Our minds and bodies lock into a battle with the present moment, making the experience more painful than it needs to be. But when we stop fighting and simply allow what is to be, we can begin to transform our experience.

It reminded me of how often we do this in life. Whether it’s struggling with difficult emotions, trying to control outcomes, or resisting something we can’t change, we end up creating more friction, more internal conflict. But when we surrender—when we accept the situation as it is, without judgment or the need to change it—there’s a shift in our energy. The fight dissolves, and the discomfort becomes something we can simply experience, rather than something that controls us.

Have a wonderful day!