The Dance of Surrender

A Journey From Collapse to Embrace

( Sit back and listen )

The First Lessons of Surrender

I was not raised to surrender. Grit and determination were early life lessons, woven into the fabric of my family values. I was taught to hold on, to push through, to make things happen through sheer will. Surrender was a word reserved for those who had lost, those who had been defeated or worse, those who quit. 

My first real experience with surrender wasn’t a choice—it was pure survival. As a young boy, my older brother relentlessly bullied me, both physically and psychologically. He was five years older, much stronger and bigger. When he pinned me down, his shins pressing against my arms, there was no fighting back. There was nothing I could do. So, I learned the fastest way out: I collapsed. I went limp. I abandoned all resistance, playing dead until he lost interest and let me go. This was my first lesson in surrender—but it was not true surrender. It was collapse.

I have spent much of my life since in vigilance, braced and gripping —gripping certainty, gripping control, gripping the belief that if I just tried hard enough I could protect myself. I learned to armor myself with determination, to fight instead of fold, to never return to that place of powerlessness. 

Life has a way of teaching surrender, whether we welcome it or not. My deepest lessons did not come gently. They came as unravelings, as moments where no amount of effort, no amount of gripping, could change what was happening. They came as heartbreaks, as failures, as losses that left me breathless. And, most poignantly, they come now as I stand beside my mother while ALS strips away her voice, her ability to move, and everything she had once been able to hold onto. 

At first, I fought. I tried to fix, to find solutions, to carry more than I was ever meant to bear. But the deeper I resist, the more suffering I feel—not just mine, but hers, too. It took me a long time to understand that surrender was not giving up. It was something else entirely. Being by her side I am experiencing a grit and determination in her experience that are not separate but in deep relationship with Surrender, maybe even …a devotion. In this, I am also allowing some that that to shift in me, a willingness to stay, to witness, to soften in the face of the inevitable rather than harden against it. Surrender, I am learning, is not the absence of strength—it is its deepest expression.

Surrender: From Collapse to Allowance to Embrace

There is a moment in every unraveling when the grip of control finally breaks. Sometimes it shatters under the weight of exhaustion. Sometimes it is pried open by something larger—grief, love, or tragedy. Sometimes, it simply slips, like sand through fingers, revealing that it was never truly holding anything at all. And sometimes—it is a release, a yielding, to the magic and mystery that is always present, even in the hardest of times, if we are willing to see it.

I have known surrender in its most cruel forms. As a young boy, being bullied by my older brother, surrender was not a choice but a survival instinct. And now, as a son standing helplessly beside my mother as ALS unravels her body, I am learning again what it means to fight against the inevitable. I have tried to fix, to ease, to carry more than I was ever meant to hold. But through these experiences, I have come to understand the difference between collapse, allowance, and embrace—each a different response to what we cannot control.

Collapse is when we lose our footing completely, our knees buckle, when surrender feels like being swallowed alive. It is the body’s way of shutting down in the face of unbearable overwhelm. This was my first understanding of surrender—going limp under my brother’s weight, retreating inward until the storm passed. But collapse is not true surrender; it is survival, a form of disappearance rather than presence.

Allowance is when we begin to let go, though often reluctantly. It is the in-between space, where we are no longer fighting but have not yet fully embraced. It can still feel like self-abandonment, like we are giving way rather than standing inside of our own unfolding. There is a hesitation here, a bracing against the unknown, a lingering fear of what might happen if we truly let go.

And then there is embrace—true surrender. This is not collapse, not resignation, but an act of courage. It is the moment when we lean forward into the unknown, not with resistance, but with trust. When we soften, not in defeat, but in devotion. When we release our grip, not because we have given up, but because we have finally understood that life is asking us to meet it, to be carried by it, to open ourselves to something beyond our own understanding.

The In-Between: Surrendering to Mystery

So much of surrender happens in the liminal—the space between what was and what will be. It is a place of uncertainty, where time loses its usual rhythm, stretching and compressing in ways that disorient and unmoor us. It can feel profoundly lonely, like standing on the edge of something vast with no clear way forward. And yet, it is here that we encounter the guides who teach us how to surrender.

The first is the Threshold Guardian, the archetypal force that demands surrender before we can cross into something new. I have met this guardian many times—on my spirit quest, in the raw terrain of deep transition, and most recently in shifting into the Witness. The Threshold Guardian does not test our strength but our willingness to release what no longer serves. This is not something we can fight, bargain with, or bypass. We must be willing to meet this presence in the deepest dialogue we have ever known. To stand at the threshold is to face the question: What are you still gripping that keeps you from becoming? (go deeper on the Threshold Guardian here)

Then, there is Coyote, the Trickster, who dismantles illusions of control through disruption, unpredictability, and play. Coyote came to me as the one who stripped away my need for answers, replacing them with ever-expanding questions. In the space of surrender, there is no longer a clear right or wrong—only the ongoing unfolding of what is. Coyote reminds us that true surrender is not passive; it is agile, adaptive, alive. It is not being overtaken—it is learning to move with the forces at play, to dance inside the unknown rather than resist it.

And finally, there is the Bridger, the one who walks between worlds, holding the tension between knowing and mystery. The Bridger does not surrender in resignation but in devotion—to connection, to transformation, to the unseen forces shaping our path.

Resistance in the liminal space often looks like gripping old stories, clinging to certainty, or trying to force a way forward. But attempting to bypass surrender is like getting stuck in mud or caught in a time warp—cycling back to the beginning of change rather than stepping through it. Until we truly embrace surrender, time itself can feel frozen. But once we do, time moves in ways that feel almost magical—aligning, unfolding, revealing synchronicities that were hidden in plain sight.

Surrender is not just a letting go; it is a portal. A threshold into the unexpected. It invites us into co-creation—with spirit, with others, with the mystery itself. It delivers magic in the mundane, not by giving us what we think we want, but by revealing what we never knew we needed. And perhaps most of all, it teaches reverence—not for what could be, but for what is, right here, in this moment of becoming.

"Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up... This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed."

— Terence McKenna

The Art of Not Knowing: Living Inside the Question

Surrender is often framed as loss, but I am slowly coming to know it as an opening. When I lost my job and my sense of self was unraveled in the business world, I didn’t just lose—somehow I innately knew that I was also making space. I allowed. I stepped fully into the great transition, and in doing so, I watched my life reshape itself in ways I could have never controlled or predicted. Even now, each day, I hold reverence and amazement for how this is still unfolding.

To apprentice to surrender is to learn the art of living inside the question instead of demanding the answer. It is the hollowing out of rigid certainty to become a vessel for something greater—intuition, spirit, love, the unexpected unfolding of life. In many wisdom traditions, the hollow bone is a symbol of one who is surrendered not in passivity, but in openness, allowing something larger to move through them.

One does not become a hollow bone through force or will. We become hollow bones by truly allowing our blessings to be shared, by showing up from deep authenticity rather than fear or ego. The more we surrender what is not ours to carry, the more space we create for what is meant to move through us.

Reflection & Invitation:

• Where is your grip on control blocking love, magic, and deep connection?

• What would shift if you stopped bracing and began allowing?

• Where has surrender opened doors you didn’t even know existed?

• What if surrender wasn’t an end, but an initiation into something deeper?

Walking the Edge: Surrender Without CollapseMy first experience of surrender was collapse. I learned to survive by going limp, by ceasing to fight. But collapse is not true surrender—it is the absence of choice. Real surrender is learning how to be with what is, without being overtaken by it.

Breathwork, movement, stillness, and ritual—these are ways we apprentice to surrender. Each offers a path to engage with surrender, not as a forced act, but as a cultivated practice. Breathwork invites us to trust and release into the rhythm of the breath itself, allowing it to move through us, unwinding trauma and energy long held in the body. Movement and dance, when fully embraced, lets us inhabit our entire being, allowing emotions to flow through us rather than harden within. On the entirely otherside, stillness is also a gateway into surrender. Stillness can feel deafening, even terrifying—but when we surrender to it, we discover that stillness is not emptiness; it is deep listening, presence and embracing all that is already there waiting for us to notice. Ritual, in turn, is our way of honoring all that wants to be acknowledged, of moving with spirit rather than against it. It is our way to connect our energy, our emotions, with the physical, imaginal, psychological and spiritual plains.

To court surrender is to create conditions—both within ourselves and around us—that make it safe to be in relationship with mystery. It is learning to be anti-fragile, deeply resonant, and available to what wants to emerge. It is the quiet trust that what is unfolding, even in its uncertainty, is part of something much larger.

Just the other day, I experienced a synchronicity that reminded me of this truth. I learned that my name, Ryan, carries meanings in different traditions—Rayan and Rayhan, words that hold resonance I had never known before. Rayan (ریان) in Arabic means "gates of paradise" and "abundant and flourishing." In Islamic tradition, Ar-Rayyan is one of the gates of Jannah (paradise), through which those who fast devotedly are said to enter. When I read this, something inside me stirred—because fasting has been part of my path, woven into my journey with Initiation, Rights of Passage, as participant and now, as I step into the role of guide. Three times in the past thirty months, I have fasted for four days and nights in the wild, listening, surrendering. This spring, as I step into my first quest as an assistant guide, I will fast again—not as a seeker, but as one who holds space for others as they cross their own thresholds.

This name, this gate, is not just an abstract symbol. It is an initiation, a passage that mirrors my own unfolding. The sacred threshold of Ar-Rayyan feels much like the crossing I stand before now—not just in guiding, but in the larger movement of my life, as I continue the shift from my old life into the new one I am building. Softening into flow, into spirit, into trust, feels different than the force and striving that once shaped my way of being in the world. It feels like allowing the unseen currents to move through me, like making space for the vision that wants to emerge rather than grasping for control.

There is a softness in the name Rayhan (ریحان), which means "fragrance," "blessed plant," or "aromatic herb"—often associated with the sweet scent of basil. In some spiritual contexts, it symbolizes purity, divine blessings, and the comforts of paradise. Both of these names feel like a scent on the wind, a subtle nudge to pay attention. They offer a reminder to allow synchronicity to come in, to stay within the question of what it means to truly live into my name. To trust that abundance can reveal itself even in emptiness.

I don’t claim to know exactly what this means for me. But I do know that it felt like a doorway—a quiet opening, an invitation to slow down. To listen differently. To allow the world to whisper through random encounters, fleeting moments, and chance conversations. This experience reminded me that surrender is often an invitation into dialogue with our own essence, one we least expect.

Final Reflection & Invitation:

How can you create conditions that make it safe to be in relationship with mystery?Where are you resisting the invitations that surrender is offering?
What would change if you trusted that what is unfolding is moving you toward something greater?

“…To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

— Mary Oliver
(from In Blackwater Woods)

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