Last week I led the Heart Sessions retreat here in upstate New York, with an amazing group of heart-centered business owners. We did chanting, we went deep, and what emerged from the depths was startling to behold. (Yes, there will be one next year. We’re still finalizing the dates.)
The recipe is simple, but not so easy to apply.
Step one: Surrender
Step two: Access Power and Sovereignty from a position of surrender
Step three: Look at your business and see what the Divine wants to make of it, including detailed strategic planning, if that’s what’s called for.
Step one was an uncomfortable process.
From the first evening through the first day I kept having to remind myself that we’re not supposed to be having a good time, that wasn’t the point. Surrender isn’t comfortable. If it’s comfortable, it’s not truly surrender.
Surrender is letting go of identity, it’s letting go of what we think is right. It’s letting go of ambitions. It’s feeling the true vessel-like nature of our beings, which includes feelings like helplessness and neediness, qualities many of us want to avoid like the plague.
Many people aren’t willing to accept those qualities, because we have often experienced them in isolation.
Surrender in isolation is what we call “collapse.” It’s the curling in that leaves us feeling separate, alone, and hopeless. This is not true surrender, although it has some of the trappings of surrender.
When you surrender, you surrender to something. When you collapse, you just fall down.
Avoiding collapse is for the good. But avoiding collapse is not to then avoid the helplessness, it’s not to then puff up your ego, or distract yourself, trying to keep yourself busy.
Instead, you surrender to Source, to Oneness, to the source of Love. You feel all of the discomfort and pain, and you ask, “Is Love available even here?”
It can happen in a moment. But, more likely, it will take some time until you can rest into what’s available to your heart.
So, we took an evening and a day in the gunk and the discomfort, working hard to hold onto both the connection to Source and the discomfort of sacrificing what we think we have and who we think we are.
I’m not making any claims that there was a supreme enlightenment surrender that happened during that time, but the Sufis don’t believe in just one surrender. We do this many times.
Which is why it’s so helpful to get used to the recipe.
Because the next day, when everyone was accessing the Divine quality of Power, and the Divine quality of Sovereignty, we were blown away by what was coming through, so clear.
And, on the final day, the clarity was also there in terms of what each person’s business actually needed, and what projects were in front of each person for the next months.
That kind of clarity is never reached strategically. Strategy is involved, but only in the third step of the recipe.
As you face the end of November, and move toward the end of the year, I want to encourage you to embrace the discomfort of pairing surrender with connection, of pairing sacrifice with devotion.
Embrace the willingness to immerse yourself in that before you try to do any end-of-year planning.
P.S. The Heart of Money Transformational Journey
We opened up registration for our popular (700+ people registered last year) Heart of Money program. It runs in January, with a special teaching in mid-December for those who are registered. And best of all, it’s still at pay-from-the-heart pricing.
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p.p.s. What if you had someone helping you identify and focus only on what mattered?
When you’re ready for this kind of help, small group coaching, strategy and healing can help your business skyrocket forward in ways that hardly any other kind of support can make happen.
Work with Yollana, or Steve, or even me, Mark. Check us out:
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12 Responses
I just want to thank you, Mark. This article is so beautiful. I will use your words here as an example of how I want to participate surrendering over the coming holiday time where i will be able to pass it alone and in deep connection, hopefully. Reading this also made me long to have been there at the retreat with all of you too.
Daniela- thank you for your kind words- I’m so glad it was helpful. And maybe next year- it would be delightful to have had you here…
Ah. This fills my heart. I love the idea of pairing surrender with connection and sacrifice with devotion. Makes sense. While this is familiar for me in the artist’s studio and in marriage, taking it into my life in an even more expanded way is something that calls me forward.
Marie- we’re all being called forward, right?
Thank you very much for posting this article, very inspiring! I like the recipe very much. I would be very interested in attending this retreat in 2017, do you think it would be at the same time of the year, mid to late November, or too soon to say? Best wishes, Cherie
Cherie- you are so welcome, and so glad you found it inspiring. I’m so glad you’re interested in the retreat- we’re working out the dates over the next few weeks, although it might well be in November again.
Thank you for this sharing Mark, it’s so beautiful and confirmational. In the creating and exploring new offerings process that i’m in right now with my business, I am called again and again to surrender FIRST. I always think I should have a strategy, a plan… but my business wants me to trust it and follow it’s calling… I have been questioning/judging myself at times, thinking I’m ‘doing it wrong’ even though this way is getting results… it’s just that my mind finds it so uncomfortable not being able to ‘explain’ or justify! Your article clarifies this process and the place that strategy holds – and now I know I can relax and trust what my business is asking me!
Charusila- yes, surrender first! So true! You can trust the process…
This is beautiful. I love how clearly you describe the distinction between surrender and collapse. The steps are so clear; a great recipe. And you are realistic about the yucky struggle that can go with surrender – or rather, resisting surrender. Thank you Mark for your very grounded, wise teachings.
Juliet- glad it is so clear! That’s what I was striving for. 🙂 You are so welcome.
Ah, yes, having been there to go through the uncomfortable and the emerging processes, I can say you’ve captured it well here. Thank you for walking me/us through the steps again and the reminder that this is not a “once and done” kind of thing! I look forward to working with what emerged and checking in again next year to see where I am then and what’s next. Thank you for creating the safe space and guidance you create to walk through the discomfort and to be lovingly held and accepted all the way through!
Barb- it is totally not once and done, right? 🙂 Every day, every moment, this is the challenge of the path we walk.