By Annmarie Early

Ego surrender is letting go. Not the letting go of a whispered, gentle goodbye but rather the abandon that overtakes you once there is no turning back.  I liken it to a roller coaster ride.  You stand in line questioning whether to get on.  As you sit in the seat, the bar crosses your lap and the car begins to slowly inch its way higher and higher into the air—click, click, click, click, click. All the time you have some rationalization chirping in your head,  “I can get off or stop this process or overcome the butterflies that are careening in my stomach.”  But, you know it’s over as the car jerks to a standstill and the landscape beyond stretches before your eyes—that is if your eyes are even open.  The hesitation is the last moment of surrender, for IT has already happened.  The car lets go and you begin the plummet into the unseen landscape that lies beyond your seeing eyes.  At that point it carries you and your only decision is to fight it, deny it, or allow it to take you where it will—you are in its grasp and there is now no turning back.

I wish it only happened once, the yielding of the ego that sends you downward.  Once you let go the release is relief and you can enjoy the ride. But, no matter how many times one abandons, the tremulous fear remains the same as you wait perched at the cliffs edge.

Oh, the grip can be so firm, holding on to what is and the feeble sense that you have control over the greater machinations that rule your life.  We, I, like to believe that we are in control—that is until all handholds are gone and the freefall begins. The moment of fear before the descent is the cliffs edge for us all.

The ego, once our guide and safeguard, must relinquish the grip that has guided and prodded us into the life we call our own.  It is less of a fight and more of a quieting that allows the yielding to take its course. For, once we let go, we are carried downward into the life that awaits us beyond the crafted and controlled. Part unwinding, part return, there is always some form of dismantling that occurs followed by the relaxing release for no longer having to hold as we have.

Maybe you have felt this in your own life recently.  Some place of yielding required by the opening you’ve said yes to.  No one raises their consciousness—living more from the truth of what they are— without it.  For ego has been our companion until now.  Ego has been the voice in our head, the task master that gets us moving.  The orchestrator of the life that the world says we should have. Ego is what is most familiar and ever-present.

As you say yes to what lies below, unseen and unknown, you ride life downward and it is the release that frees you.  Practice the yes through your breath, riding it down like a slide from your head to your sit bone and let it ground you into the floor.  Feel the breath as your guide, hold it for a few counts as if you are perched at the top of the roller coaster of life about to be released and then let it carry you downward. Breathe in going up, hold and release the energy downward through you without releasing the breath, and then let the breath carry you down as you exhale.

Know that we are all in this together, riding life downward in release as we let go of the grip of ego and let the ride take us.  For, it is what we were meant to be, in our essence. After the release—as scary and upending as it might be— life, your true life is waiting for you.