Practice Surrender in the World

Part 3—Practice Surrender in the World

7. Treat Business as Spiritual Practice.

Business is first and foremost a spiritual process for me. It's only secondarily an opportunity to make money that creates energy for other things I'm called to do.

That may sound like a convenient way to spiritualize ambition. I understand the suspicion. I've questioned it myself.

But business reaches a part of me that meditation, yoga, relationships, and spiritual sessions don't reach in the same way.

Imagine a stream of water that looks crystal clear. Stir the bottom and the mud becomes visible. Romantic relationships once stirred one category of fear, attachment, and control. I've worked through much of that material. Business stirs another category.

Scale. Visibility. Responsibility. Money. Leadership. Success. Execution. The possibility that the vision could actually work.

Business is the only arena that stirs this particular mud.

That's why I embraced it.

About twenty-five years ago, while I was in law school, I went into a sweat lodge in Dulzura. I thought the experience might become my ticket out. I wanted to leave law school and business behind. Instead, the message came through clearly: go back to law school. Finish.

I cried and screamed. I didn't want that answer. I followed it anyway.

For nearly twenty years, it didn't make sense. Now it does.

Law, business, computer science, tax, agreements, technology, spiritual practice - the path wasn't a collection of mistakes separating me from my real work. It became preparation. The company I'm building is a culmination of that thread, at least at this point in the painting.

That doesn't mean the company is guaranteed to succeed. It means the work has meaning beyond the financial outcome.

I compare it to skateboarding on transition. There's a corner of a skate park near me that rises ten or eleven feet in solid concrete and goes oververt. If I ride up and try to grind the coping while thinking through each movement, I'm fucked. I'll fall. Fortunately, I know how to fall, but I'll still fall.

When I get out of the way, I flow through the corner.

In business, I sometimes feel like a baby giraffe on a skateboard. I don't yet have the embodied certainty I have on transition or in a spiritual session. Intellectually, I know I have intelligence, experience, education, and evidence of capability. My nervous system hasn't always caught up.

That gap is the practice.

Spiritual practice doesn't exempt me from learning. I once traced a period of stuckness to fear of failure and then to something more embarrassing: I was trying to get away without learning. I didn't want to learn because I was afraid to see how much I didn't know.

So what does a person do when he doesn't feel up to the task?

Learn.

Discipline was missing. I could dream, build foundations, and create concepts, but execution required a structure. I considered an MBA and decided that a self-directed, regimented program might serve the actual need better. Read six days a week. Take thorough notes. Learn actively.

That's spiritual practice too.

Surrender isn't a substitute for competence. Getting out of the way lets the tools be used. It doesn't create tools I refuse to develop.

The company exposes rough edges. A rough edge isn't a verdict. It's something that can be smoothed. The process becomes finer and finer. Procrastination was once a large pattern. Much of it left years ago. What remains is subtler: hesitation at scale, the desire to hold back when things go well, the temptation to distract after a breakthrough, the inherited belief that I should remain second-in-command.

Do the work. Wait for the next rough edge to show itself. Relax into it. Work with it. Return to the work.

Money isn't the meaning. I don't believe happiness comes from having a billion dollars. I could build a ten-billion-dollar company and still die. The money doesn't determine my relationship with God or other people.

The journey matters. The direction matters. The vector matters.

I get to choose the vector.

That's autonomy.

Business places the philosophical claims under pressure. Can I trust when payroll, product, partnership, and reputation are involved? Can I distinguish authority from fear-based control? Can I learn rather than perform certainty? Can I delegate? Can I receive support? Can I remain connected to purpose when money becomes real?

The answers don't come from a retreat alone. They come from Tuesday morning decisions.

This is why I don't see business as a distraction from spiritual life. Business is where the remaining material becomes unavoidable.

It's the hardest thing I have ever done, not because every task is beyond me, but because it brings ambition, worth, responsibility, authority, and surrender into the same room.

When it becomes uncomfortable, the old fantasy appears: get a normal job, retire, die. Avoid the groundlessness. Stop pushing the boundaries.

That fantasy isn't wrong. A normal job can be a beautiful life. It's wrong for me when I use it only as an escape from the discomfort of my actual direction.

Growing pains aren't the problem.

The task is to build from the same place I enter when skating, guiding a session, or listening deeply: decisive, present, supported, and out of the way.

Then learn what I need to learn.

Hire who I need to hire.

Make the decision that belongs to my role.

Let the company stir the mud.

Let the water become clear for real.

8. Pray by Listening.

I used to pray for outcomes.

Save the relationship. Save the person I love. Save me. Restore what existed before. Make the future look the way I want it to look.

Then I realized that even prayer can become force of will.

I resist. I fight. I clench and flinch. Then I try to pray my way out of the situation. The prayer may sound surrendered because it uses the language of God, but underneath it I still want the result to be the result I want.

So the prayer changed.

Do not save the situation according to my plan.

Help me stop resisting.

Help me stop trying to force what I think salvation should look like.

Let God's work, God's power, reality, higher wisdom - whatever language fits - move uninhibited through me.

That's a frightening prayer because it doesn't reserve the outcome.

I believe there's a part of us that knows what's needed. It may be something beyond the body. It may be part of the subconscious. I do not know what it is. It doesn't matter for the practice.

I know that when I ask with one hundred percent sincerity and surrender for change to happen in my life, change happens.

But be careful what you wish for.

If the change were readily available and easily accessible, I'd probably already have it. The barrier isn't always lack of information. It may be the pain I haven't been willing to feel, the identity I haven't been willing to release, the truth I haven't been willing to say, or the action I haven't been willing to take.

Prayer is therefore more listening than speaking.

Listen especially when the response feels counterintuitive. The thought that doesn't make sense may deserve more attention than the polished answer the conscious mind produces immediately. This doesn't mean every strange thought is divine guidance. It means I shouldn't reject an answer merely because it violates the plan of the part that asked the question.

The sweat lodge answer was: go back to law school.

I didn't want that answer. It didn't fit the spiritual escape I imagined. I followed it, and its meaning emerged through decades.

Listening requires humility in both directions. I shouldn't dismiss the counterintuitive. I also shouldn't inflate it into absolute truth. I can say, This is what came through. This is how it feels. This is what happened when I followed it.

I do not know whether every experience is metaphysically real. I do know whether it works.

That sentence protects the work from two opposite errors. I don't have to deny an experience because I can't prove its ontology. I also don't have to demand that another person accept my explanation.

Only speak from experience and personal realization, and you can never go wrong. That doesn't mean every conclusion is correct. It means I'm honest about the source. I'm not teaching Italian cooking when I do not know how to cook. I'm saying what I saw, what I felt, what I tried, and what changed.

Prayer can use the same discipline.

Ask sincerely.

Become quiet.

Notice the body.

Let the first layer of preferred answers pass.

Write what arrives before editing it.

Test what can be tested.

Stay honest about uncertainty.

Then act.

Listening without action can become another spiritual performance. If the answer is to make the call, make it. If the answer is to stop rescuing, stop. If the answer is to study, study. If the answer is to wait, wait without secretly forcing.

Sometimes the response isn't a sentence. It's a contraction under the rib cage. It's heaviness behind the eyes. It's the sudden recognition that the mind is looking for relief from itself. Listening includes the body before the mind tells the story.

I no longer want prayer to be a method of getting what I want from God. I want it to be a practice of becoming available to what is.

That doesn't make desire wrong. Desire is part of the painting. Love naturally wants the beloved to be safe. A parent naturally wants the child to be protected. A founder naturally wants the company to succeed.

Surrender doesn't remove those movements. It stops converting them into a claim that reality must comply.

Pray less like a person issuing instructions to the universe.

Pray more like a person placing an ear against the door.

Then listen.

9. Ask Carefully.

Ask for change carefully, because the answer may arrive as the exact experience you've been avoiding.

When I ask sincerely for something to change, I believe I'll be given what's needed. That doesn't mean I'll be given what I pictured. The difference is the entire point.

If I ask to become courageous, I may not receive a feeling of courage. I may receive a situation in which courage becomes necessary.

If I ask to surrender, I may not receive serenity. I may watch the structure I use to feel in control become unstable.

If I ask to lead, I may not receive recognition. I may receive responsibility.

If I ask to be free from an inherited belief, I may hear the belief more clearly than ever before.

If I ask to be held, I may first have to admit how tired I am of holding everything.

The request isn't a vending-machine transaction. It's permission for the deeper process to reveal the obstacle.

That's why the first question remains: How much pain am I willing to experience to reduce my suffering, and how quickly?

Sincerity without willingness becomes frustration. I ask for transformation but reject every form in which transformation could arrive. I ask to become a butterfly while negotiating to preserve every part of the caterpillar.

Change happens constantly. Transformation is different. Transformation can mean that nothing of the old remains. The image is familiar because it works: the caterpillar enters the cocoon and doesn't emerge as an improved caterpillar. Birth has pain. The old structure can't hold back the new expression forever.

I don't need to romanticize every collapse. Not every loss is a divine lesson. Not every crisis should be intensified. Practical help, medical care, therapy, boundaries, and safety matter. Surrender isn't an excuse to remain in danger or to abandon judgment.

But I can stop assuming that discomfort disproves the answer.

Ask carefully also means ask precisely.

- Do I want the external outcome, or do I want freedom from the suffering connected to it?

- Do I want this person to change, or do I want to become capable of loving without controlling?

- Do I want success, or do I want to become the person who can responsibly carry the work?

- Do I want certainty, or do I want the capacity to move through uncertainty?

- Do I want relief, or do I want truth?

The answers may overlap, but they aren't identical.

I once wanted to maintain a relationship as if I had to be the foundation on which it lived. That was impossible. A relationship exists through two people in a particular moment. Trying to hold it in a steady state was a fool's errand. The deeper request wasn't, Keep this exactly as I want it. It was, Let me stop resisting what it is. Let me love without forcing. Let me establish boundaries without making another person wrong.

That request produces a different life.

The same applies to business. Asking for a large company while refusing to learn, delegate, decide, and be seen isn't a surrendered request. It's fantasy. The answer may be a daily learning regimen. It may be an uncomfortable conversation with a partner. It may be the exposure of fear at the exact moment momentum increases.

The answer can look ordinary.

Listen especially to the thought that doesn't fit the story. Then test it against reality, ethics, and the responsibilities of the moment.

A counterintuitive thought isn't automatically wisdom. But the mind that built the current trap may not produce an exit that feels familiar.

Ask with one hundred percent sincerity.

Release the demand that the path protect the current identity.

Remain willing to say, I do not know.

Then notice what life places in front of you.

The lesson may arrive softly. It may arrive through yoga, meditation, breath work, or a trusted conversation. It may arrive as a single incisive sentence.

It may also arrive through the hard way because the hard way is the only way you're currently willing to recognize.

Ask carefully.

Not because you should fear the answer.

Because you should respect it.

10. Trust the Next Moment.

I used to hear that faith the size of a mustard seed could move a mountain and imagine a test of will. If I possessed real faith, I should be able to command the mountain. If the mountain didn't move, my faith must be insufficient.

I now understand the mustard seed differently.

The mustard seed doesn't have to move the mountain in the first moment. It begins a process.

All I'm asked to trust is that this next moment is taken care of.

Then I enter the moment and see that it's taken care of. That experience becomes evidence. The next act of trust becomes slightly larger. The increase isn't necessarily linear. It may be exponential.

It isn't x plus two. It may be x squared.

A small leap produces proof. The proof changes the size of what now counts as a small leap. The same apparent act of trust has an outsized effect the second, third, and fourth time.

Eventually, the capacity reaches decisions that once felt like mountains.

This matters because telling a frightened nervous system to surrender everything isn't always useful. Trust can be trained inductively.

Don't begin with the largest risk in your life. Begin while driving to the store. Begin in the conversation at Meijer. Begin by not rehearsing one ordinary interaction. Begin by allowing a small task to unfold without controlling every detail.

Observe what happens.

The controller needs lived evidence more than philosophy. It can hear a thousand teachings about surrender and still believe that without rehearsal nothing will go optimally. One ordinary moment of trust can become more persuasive than the teaching.

Skepticism is allowed. Faith doesn't require pretending certainty. The mustard seed can coexist with doubt. It only needs enough room to produce the experiment.

Choose a moment with real but limited stakes.

Notice the urge to rehearse, manage, or force.

Take one breath.

Ask what the simplest next step is.

Let the interaction occur.

Record the result honestly. Don't count only outcomes that matched your preference. Ask whether you remained available, responsive, and intact even when the moment changed direction.

Trust isn't the belief that everything will happen as I want. It's the discovery that I can meet what happens without the amount of control I imagined was necessary.

That's a deeper autonomy.

Rehearsal can look like preparation, and sometimes it's preparation. The distinction is whether rehearsal develops skill or tries to eliminate uncertainty. Practice the talk, learn the material, prepare the numbers. Then notice when preparation has become a ritual for persuading anxiety to grant permission.

Trust doesn't reject preparation. It ends the fantasy that preparation can control reality.

The small-moment practice also prevents surrender from becoming grandiose. I don't need a dramatic spiritual experience to prove that I trust God, higher self, reality, or life. I can let the next cashier interaction be enough. I can let the lost wallet, the delayed call, the wrong turn, or the unplanned question become part of the practice.

When I find that I can trust in small things, I quickly discover that I can trust in larger things.

The mountain moves in a different way.

Maybe it doesn't obey my will. Maybe the path around it appears. Maybe I become strong enough to climb it. Maybe I discover that it wasn't the mountain I needed to move. Maybe the person I become through a thousand mustard-seed moments can carry what the old self called impossible.

Trust the next moment.

Then let the next moment teach you how to trust the one after that.