Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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Devotion…Surrender…

surrender“Until you practice surrender, the spiritual dimension is something you read about, talk about, get excited about, write books about, think about, believe in – or don’t, as the case may be. It makes no difference. Not until you surrender does it become a living reality in your life.”
~Eckhart Tolle

There is an open secret to the spiritual life, and it’s called surrender.

We can try our best to understand the nature of reality and our conditioning. We can hope forever that our troubling thoughts and feelings will subside so we’ll finally be at peace.

But until we surrender, the happiness we long for will elude us.

The word “surrender” means to give back completely, to release our ownership of something and offer it back.

What do you surrender?

  • Your personal needs and desires
  • Attachment to the content and meaning of all thoughts
  • Attachment to things being familiar and known
  • The need to know
  • The need to understand and analyze with your mind
  • The need to control

Thats a lot! It’s everything you hang onto that keeps you feeling separate—from others, from yourself, and from life.

In fact, you never owned these things—they were never you. Surrender brings you back to what was always true.

Surrender everything that makes up your personal identity, and where are you? Who are you?

You’re empty, willing, and totally receptive to let yourself be the instrument of something greater. And that something greater is the natural intelligence that is the pure substance of life.

Everything is given—the people you know, your talents and skills, the situations you find yourself in, the challenges and joys that make up your life.

You can subtract your personal desires and ideas about things, and your life is still here, beautifully unfolding as it is.

And things get a lot easier once we stop resisting this movement. We’re coming into alignment with things as they truly are.

To me, surrender arises from absolute devotion to the intelligence of the life force that is all-knowing, all-encompassing. I bow down with utter humility, beyond receptive, open with nothing personal in the way.

I don’t need to carry any concerns or figure anything out. I don’t go into my mind for answers.

I simply let myself be taken by the river of life that is already flowing, receiving everything that’s given without one second of hesitation.

What’s invited is pure devotion, releasing everything until you are nothing and letting yourself be the vessel that you truly are.

You love what’s given with all your heart. You’re a thousand percent willing to do the bidding that’s offered.

Surrender leaves nothing out, not one stone unturned. But don’t get deterred by the totality of what is being asked of you. Take a baby step in the direction of surrender.

  • Stop questioning one idea you’re attached to and flow with what’s given.
  • Put aside your view on how you want things to be in one situation and wholeheartedly embrace what’s actually happening as it is.

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Bow down with humility to your one true home, and there’s just infinite luminous pure being.

“Life is a mystery. You cannot understand it unless you surrender, for your intellect cannot grasp its expansive and infinite nature, its real meaning and fullness. Bow down low and be humble; then you will know life’s meaning.”
~ Amma

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Stop…Be Still

“To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
~Chang Tzu

It was a lightbulb moment for me when I realized how much I had been putting up barriers to life—and happiness.

I was in a place on my path where I was diligently studying my in-the-moment experience—and I discovered that my first response to people, situations, and new possibilities was to pull away in fear.

For many years, I had been automatically saying “No”—before I considered what was being offered, before I let myself feel the excitement of something new and unknown. I probably missed out on a lot.

I was moving away from what was being given, and it felt bad.

As soon as I saw this tendency, I was committed to changing it. I didn’t want to be tamped down by a wall of fear. I wanted to relax and feel peaceful more than anything. I just knew there was more to life, and I wanted to figure out how to find it.

Over time, I learned to turn inward toward my inner experience, right into the blocks and walls. I learned to deeply accept everything without any resistance.

I shifted from moving away to staying, opening, and fully receiving things as they are. Finally, I was saying “Yes!” to life. It was a happy revolution in my whole way of being.

Caught in our conditioning, we tend to move in three ways: toward, away, or against. Which is your style? See how your mind and body moves—and how you move along with it—and you will discover the endless peace that comes with not moving.

Moving Toward

People who move toward feel a well of need and lack inside. If this is your style, you leave your inner grounding and grasp at people and things to fill you up and give you what you think you’re missing.

You believe your thoughts that try to convince you that you’re not enough.

Who you are is not defined by these limiting thoughts. Who are you if you don’t believe them?

Let your attachment to these thoughts go, and you’ll see that you are openness itself, whole, full, and lacking nothing.

Moving toward looks like this:

  • Seeking approval and attention from others
  • Concern about the image you present in the world
  • Sacrificing yourself for others, then feeling resentful
  • Perceiving yourself as lacking and flawed
  • Difficulty walking away from relationships that aren’t working
  • Attachment to your personal dramas
  • Grasping money, people, and objects
  • Feeling that you are special and avoiding your ordinariness

When you notice these tendencies, stop. With loving acceptance, let the feelings and urges arise, but don’t act on them. Be the space that they arise in.

Relax back into yourself, and realize that life is complete, just as it is, in this very moment.

Moving Away

Moving away is about fear and avoidance. There is tightening in the body, contraction in the breath, and a physical pulling away from whatever is arising. Threat is seen everywhere.

Moving away is built on a perceived lack of safety and security. What are you really afraid of, anyway? Can you consider trusting that you are OK and that you can engage with life as it’s unfolding right now?

Moving away looks like this:

  • Doubt and indecision
  • Nonstop thinking fueled by fear
  • Avoiding people and situations
  • Trepidation in the face of anything new
  • Fear of committing to anything
  • Excessive worry
  • Holding yourself back

Moving away has strong physical and mental elements. Learn how to relax your body and nervous system and breathe deeply. Experiment with not running your life by all the thoughts that appear in your mind. Put the thoughts aside (they aren’t helping you), and stay here and present.

Open yourself fully to the wonder of what’s actually here now. What are you experiencing through your senses? What is the space that these sense perceptions arise in?

Moving Against

You’re moving against when you’re stuck in anger, frustration, and entitlement. Some of us live at odds with the world, resisting everything. We show up ready for a struggle, while missing out on what is actually here when we let our guard down.

Moving against is a defensive posture that avoids vulnerability. What if you allowed yourself to tenderly open to the reality of what’s here now?

Moving against looks like this:

  • Anger and resistance to people, situations, and the world
  • Rebelliousness
  • A sense of entitlement—things should be the way you want them to be
  • Judgment—either outward toward others or inward toward yourself
  • Stuffing anger by eating, sleeping, and avoiding conflict at all costs
  • Desire for power and control

It takes so much effort to face the world primed for a fight. Really, there’s nothing to protect. Feel the sensations of anger, and notice the effortlessness of being open, soft, and receptive. Relax into life as it’s unfolding.

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The strategies of moving toward, away, and against sap your energy. They divide, fragment, and keep you from relaxing into the infinite space of what’s true and real.

What to do when you notice these tendencies? Stop
be still. Feel the conditioned movements—and don’t move into them. Be the vast welcoming openness that they arise in.

You’re lovingly noticing the thoughts and feelings, but giving them no energy that makes them real.

They shed like a snake sheds its skin. And here you are
not moving and fully available to all of life.

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A Better Way to Talk to Yourself

“In my experience, we don’t make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn’t personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.”
~Byron Katie

As you probably know in your own experience, as humans we are highly conditioned to believe what our minds tell us about ourselves.

Without even being aware of it, we take on the way the thoughts describe us as our unquestioned reality.

  • If your thoughts tell you about all the things that could go wrong, you say, “I’m anxious,” or “I’m a control freak.”
  • If your thoughts judge, compare, and criticize—yourself or others—you live in that negativity and separation as if it were true.
  • You believe your opinions are facts.When we say, “I am
(fill in whatever the thought is saying),” we’re identifying with the content of those thoughts, taking it to be true.

Here’s a fact: identifying with our thoughts will always bring suffering to our lives. So if you want to suffer, how to do it? Believe what your thoughts tell you.

How You Speak to Yourself

For most of us, it takes time to untangle ourselves from the content of our thinking, and a skillful way along the path is to be very clear in the language we use.

It’s common to say something like,“I’m a mess and unlovable.” What’s more accurate is: “Thoughts are arising in me telling me I’m a mess and unlovable.”

You might say, “I’m worried.” But a more accurate way to describe what’s actually happening is to say, “Worrying thoughts are arising in me.”

When you say, “I’m worried,” you believe you’re the one who is worried, and there’s a sense of shutting down and believing all the implications of being someone who is worried.

But “Worrying thoughts are arising in me” changes everything. You are no longer identifying with what the thoughts are telling you. You have space for something new.

And it doesn’t have to be only about thoughts. You can also say, ‘The feeling of anxiety is arising in me.” Or, “There are sensations present in the body,” instead of, “I’m feeling anxious.”

Your Thoughts Don’t Describe You Accurately

This may sound like an awkward way to describe your experience, but it’s much closer to the truth than identifying with your thoughts. I highly recommend it.

There are benefits to this practice.

First, it’s a quick and obvious reminder that you are not your thoughts. It helps you to break the identification with your thoughts so you’re not taking them so personally.

Yes, that’s what I mean. Your thoughts aren’t personal to you—they just appear in the mind.

Once you have some space from the contents of your mind (which are mostly negative), you can be in the moment with openness, curiosity, and kindness.

Second, it invites you to question who you are and who you’re not.If fear or a judging thought arises in you, then who is the you that they arise in? This question offers an interesting exploration that will help you to suffer less.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry about it. Just live in the question of what’s true about you if you are not what your thoughts tell you that you are.

Take away the content of your thoughts
and what remains?

Your Turn

I invite you to try out this practice—how about right now? Close your eyes and notice the thoughts or feelings that are arising right now. Say, “These thoughts and feelings are arising in me.”

Now shift to the “me” that these objects are arising in. You’ll probably become aware of open space, ease, and peace. Now you are aware of the essential choice.

You can pick up those objects if you want to any time and make them real—or rest as this openness
endlessly


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Don’t Follow Your Feelings

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
~Rabindranath Tagore

I know what it’s like to live a life driven by emotion, and believe me, it won’t make you happy.

Someone shows up late, and you’re triggered by fear and anger. You get some negative feedback, and you sulk in sadness. You live in anxiety, cycling thoughts over and over about what will happen next and if it will all be okay.

It’s like you’re a yo-yo on a string, with your happiness tied to all the circumstances in your life that you can’t control.

If you ask me, this is no way to live.

Until you become fully aware of your inner experiences, emotions will rule, guaranteed.

Emotions are highly conditioned, meaning that they are automatic reactions that arise in you in response to things that happen. When a memory comes to mind, you don’t need to make yourself feel sad. You just do.

And it’s not only about how you feel.

If you make decisions based on emotions, you are unlikely to be happy and fulfilled.

  • You feel empty and choose the first potential partner who comes along, even though the red flags are flying everywhere.
  • Because you’re afraid, you don’t reach out to engage fully in the world.
  • Your resentment keeps your heart closed and your relationships stuck.

You’re making choices all the time—are these the ones you really want to be making? I didn’t think so.

Maybe it’s time to shine the light of awareness on emotions. Emotions have power over you when you avoid them. But get curious about them, bring them into conscious awareness, and things begin to change.

Rather than resisting, you’re welcoming and accepting.

And you can choose to respond from clarity, logic, and intelligence instead of from emotion.

See how you don’t need to get rid of emotions or change them into happier ones? That takes way too much effort.

Instead, become aware of the feelings that take you over. Once you see how feelings have been driving you, you can put them aside and make a different choice.

You have the space to be reasonable, flexible, logical, and smart about how you live.

Think of a problem you have—an unresolved relationship from the past, work stress, an ongoing situation that frustrates you. Notice how your emotions about the situation make you feel and what they motivate you to do.

Now, become aware of the emotion that’s fueling the problem. See the story the emotion is telling you.

Notice how the emotion isn’t serving your peace and happiness. Be honest with yourself—is it helping or hurting?

Now, bundle up the feeling and put it aside. Experience yourself without the weight of the emotion.

Returning to the problem, how does it look to you without the emotion tangled up in it?

Even if this process seems difficult for you, imagine what it would be like to not follow your emotions.

Difficult feelings can be like old friends who have overstayed their welcome. You’re used to them being around, but you don’t enjoy their company.

So know this: Feelings are temporary, and you can let them go. They don’t have to drive and define you. Moment after moment, you can find the place in you that is free of emotion. And when you do, live there happily with clarity, intelligence, and love.

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How and Why to Turn Toward Your Body

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
~Rumi

I love melting into the present moment. Here is where I deeply feel everything.

I take in the world through all of my senses and savor what I experience. And when I’m very present, without being drawn into thoughts about the past or future, it’s so fresh, and there’s a deep, undeniable sense of peace.

But it hasn’t always been like this. Before I knew differently, all I did was think—think, think, think. I worried
analyzed
dissected
looked at things from different angles.

I played out scenarios about what might and might not happen and doubted everything.

I endlessly evaluated, compared, and tried to understand why. It seemed to never stop.

I was like one big walking head with barely a body attached.

I didn’t know exactly what wasn’t working, but I felt tense and anxious most of the time. I wasn’t at ease in my life, and it didn’t feel good.

I was aware that I was suffering, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I tried psychotherapy—years of it—but didn’t get to the core of the problem. I even became a psychotherapist to help others
and still I suffered.

Thankfully, I wasn’t doomed to suffer forever. Things began to shift when I started on a spiritual path.

Studying My Inner Experience

Instead of trying to fix my problems and life story, I was directed to notice whatever was happening in my present moment experience. And this changed everything.

Looking inward, it was easy to see thoughts, as they were flooding me most of the time. But there was something else that I had missed completely.

I was amazed to realize how afraid I was and how much fear was living in my body.

I learned that all emotions are made up of two elements: a story running through our minds that’s fueled by the feeling—and physical sensations in the body. That was the key I had missed!

I was so much in my head worrying about the future and doubting myself that I didn’t realize how much tension and contraction was in my body—until I started becoming aware of it. No wonder something felt off!

There was a time when I would stop whenever I felt fear, close my eyes, ignore the thoughts, and simply feel the sensations in my body. Many times during the day, I sat on my couch feeling physical tension, contracted chest and jaw muscles, and shallow breathing.

I didn’t have a goal to get rid of or change these sensations—I just made the space for them to be present. Sometimes they would lessen, and sometimes not, but it didn’t matter.

It was relieving to finally get to the core of these uncomfortable feelings and let the sensations be. After rejecting my body for so long, it felt like I was being incredibly kind to myself.

And it wasn’t just fear that I felt. There was the array of emotions we all feel—anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration. Every time I was triggered, I stopped and welcomed the sensations appearing in the body.

And I began to realize something miraculous. When I didn’t pay attention to the stories my mind was telling me, the problems I thought I had all but disappeared. I felt surprisingly peaceful when I was simply present with the sensations as they are, so why go into all the drama? I became totally disinterested in it.

It wasn’t immediate, but over time, I felt less stressed. I didn’t worry so much about making the right decision or trying to figure everything out. I was lighter, happier, more present, and more loving toward others.

One morning I woke up and, much to my amazement, I realized that I hadn’t been anxious for quite some time.

Now, years later, I have a loving relationship with whatever appears in my body, and this relationship has served me well.

The Residue in Our Bodies

The body contains the residue of all our learning—all experiences, traumas, fears, and conditioning.

Whereas our minds work overtime avoiding, explaining, and distracting, our bodies are simple—they react to the stimuli around us. They have been present our entire lives absorbing the effects of our experiences.

In their natural state, our bodies are open vessels free of tension. That’s why infants move with such freedom and flexibility.

Stress takes its toll as we experience physical, mental, and emotional demands in life. We become scared and untrusting, and the body begins to close down. These bodily contractions are like a defensive shield, armoring us as we meet the challenges we face in the world.

Bringing our attention back into the body gets to the root of the problem. Here is where we connect with ourselves, heal separation, and discover our essential wholeness. This is what’s right here and available when we turn our attention within.

How to Be Aware of the Body

How do we become aware of what’s happening in our bodies? Here are three practices that help you build a kind and loving relationship with your present moment experience in the body.

Try them out, and you’ll say goodbye to being harsh, rejecting, and hard on yourself
and hello to peaceful living.

Practice 1: Conscious Breathing

One of the wonders of life in this human body is the regularity of our breathing. And we can use the breathing as a tool at any time to focus our attention inward and turn away from our busy minds.

The instruction is very simple: be conscious of what happens when you breathe. Simply bring your attention to the direct experience of breathing—the sensations of the inhale and the sensations of the exhale—and be curious.

You might notice you feel more relaxed as you pay attention to your breathing, and the breath itself might shift in some way—or not. Simply continue to be aware of all the sensations. Almost immediately, you’ll naturally breathe more slowly and deeply, which soothes the nervous system.

A conscious breath is available to you any time you feel stressed or stuck. It’s a reset, a wakeup call, and a gateway into being at peace with yourself.

Practice 2: Welcoming Sensations

When you welcome sensations, you stop and simply notice the sensations that are present and allow them to be. You meet any sensation with an attitude of acceptance, curiosity, and love—with no story, no commentary, and no need to figure it out.

Rather than panicking with what you notice or going into a story about how hard it is to feel it, you’re simply aware of it. You’re the welcoming presence that invites the sensations into the light of conscious awareness. This is what I practiced on my couch many years ago and still do often throughout the day.

Sitting here, breathing and allowing things to be as they are, you’re likely to feel an uncanny sense of ease.

When do you welcome sensations?

  • When you’re triggered,
  • When you feel anxious or ill-at-ease,
  • Any time at all.

Practice 3: Mindful Movement

If you live with your attention lost in your mind, it helps tremendously to invite your attention into the body as much as possible. Mindful movement practices help.

Yoga, tai chi, and slow walking bring awareness to the body and encourage presence by synchronizing movement with breathing. They invite your attention into the here-and-now by ignoring mind chatter and focusing on being with the moment as it is.

Movement practices also teach us about being present in daily life. Moving into a yoga posture is ultimately no different from washing dishes, folding laundry, or taking a walk in nature.

Coming Home to Ourselves

When we’re completely in our heads, we’re pulled into the drama of our problems. We feel fragmented, anxious, and alienated from ourselves.

That’s how I was living years ago without even realizing it. And maybe that’s how you’re living, too.

By turning away from thoughts and being aware of what’s appearing in the body, we begin to come home to ourselves. Here we discover spaciousness, grounding, and connection with all of life.

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