Day Shift — What Does It Mean to TRULY Surrender?

"Let go of those thoughts, take a breath, and come back to here."

One of the reasons I do this podcast is to tell people—to tell you, and frankly, to tell myself—that change is possible. It's the nature of being alive to feel fallible, to feel that we're not coming up to the level that we’re meant to be at, that we’re not succeeding the way we’re meant to succeed. It's the nature of life to cause us discomfort when we're not thriving.

This is how nature keeps itself going. If non-thriving life were allowed to continue, nature would not continue. This is the basis of evolution, or this is one of the prime factors—if not the prime factor—in evolution itself.

When we feel this discomfort, the problem is that our mind makes sense of it by telling us that we're different — we're the ones who don’t get to change; we’re the ones who really are separate, different, apart from. That I don’t belong; that I’ll never get it; that I missed my shot; that thing happened to me; or I happened to that thing. All these different reasons we tell ourselves why we feel stuck and hopeless.

Then someone — someone like me — says, "Well, you have to surrender." And then someone — also like me — says, "What the hell does that mean, ‘surrender’? I gave up a long time ago!"

I think one of the best ways for me to look at surrender is simply to give myself permission to let go of my ideas about what's going on here—to let go of my ideas of who I am, what I am, and really importantly, what I deserve, where I belong. Let go of all those negative ideas that I’ve built over the course of a life to explain to myself why I don’t feel better. Letting go of those ideas allows me the freedom to fall into what's actually happening here.

And what’s that? It’s the flow of the Divine. This whole world—all of it—is the Divine seeking to express itself, the Divine seeking to love itself — through me; through you; toward me; toward you. It is the light of the Divine wanting nothing more than to flow into those places where it hasn't yet flowed, or hasn't flowed fully.

Then to engage, on a daily basis, really, in teaching ourselves—by listening to others, by asking questions, by studying anything we’re attracted to in terms of spiritual teachings—that this is the truth of what's happening here. Teaching ourselves that it is not possible for me to be separate from that evolution of love that is the currency of the universe.

So, what I tell myself is:

Today, when I find myself locked in the battle of "What’s wrong with me?" or "What’s wrong with you?" or "What’s wrong with the world?" I just let go of those thoughts, take a breath, and come back to here. Come back to here with my attention outward, in order to stay out of that thinking for at least a moment, and in order to see evidence of the light of consciousness, to see evidence of the Divine at play in the world. And when I fall back into my thinking, to choose again to come back out here, and again to come back out here.

Thanks for reading. I really do hope you have a beautiful day.

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Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and co-authored the book Embracing Bliss.