Surrender, Part One: On the Edge of Ourselves

In life, there are times—such as during grief, burnout, heartbreak, addiction, becoming a parent, or illness—when we feel: I can’t do this anymore. Yet, beneath that feeling, another thought arises: Then let go.

In recovery communities, this is referred to as surrender. It’s not about succumbing to hopelessness, but rather handing over—transitioning from control to trust, from resistance to receptiveness. It’s a profound exhalation when you’ve exhausted all strategies.

The word surrender comes from the Old French surrendre, meaning “to give over, to yield.” Its Latin roots—sub (under) + rendere (to give back)—suggest something profound: we’re not really giving something away, but giving it back. Back to life, to God, to the unfolding of what is. Maybe even back to ourselves.

This idea—of not being separate to begin with—is at the heart of many spiritual paths. But philosophers have approached this too, each offering a different lens on what surrender might mean, not as defeat, but as an act of truth.

Kierkegaard: Surrender as the Leap Beyond Reason

Existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explained that we arrive at a moment when reason falters, where solutions vanish, and the sole way ahead is the leap of faith. In his view, surrender is not passive; it is a radical commitment to something beyond certainty—a readiness to stand at the brink of the unknown and release control.

Simone Weil: Surrender Through Attention

Simone Weil, a mystic and philosopher, regarded attention as a holy act of yielding. Genuine attention demands that we rid ourselves of our plans, desires, and even our self-identity, allowing us to truly perceive what is before us. In this act of emptying, she believed that grace could find its way in.

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.”

Lao Tzu: Surrender to the Flow of the Tao

In Taoism, surrender appears as wu wei, or effortless action—letting go of force, agenda, and struggle. Life becomes less about willpower and more about alignment with the Way. “When I let go of what I am,” Lao Tzu writes, “I become what I might be.” The surrender here is to flow, not fate.

Meister Eckhart: Detachment as Inner Freedom

Meister Eckhart, the 13th-century Christian mystic, taught that we must let go of not just possessions and ego—but even our ideas of God. Real surrender, for him, is radical detachment, where the soul becomes empty enough to hold the divine.

“The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.”

Alan Watts: Surrendering the Illusion of Control

Alan Watts believed the greatest illusion we suffer from is the idea that we’re separate from the rest of existence. He encouraged us to surrender not because we are weak, but because we’re already part of the whole—we just forgot.

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”

Carl Jung: Surrender to the Deep Psyche

Jung discussed the idea of yielding to the unconscious, viewing it not as a step backward, but as a journey of healing and unification. He believed that genuine transformation occurs when the ego releases its hold and permits an inner, greater intelligence to lead.

Surrender as Remembering

What if surrender isn’t a loss, but a return? A giving back of what was never fully ours to hold alone? The etymology hints at this. To surrender is to give under, give back, give over. There’s humility in that. There’s grace, too.

We are never entirely disconnected. Not from one another, not from nature, and not even from the aspects of ourselves we've attempted to escape. Surrender serves as the bridge back—delicate, quivering, yet genuine.

In Part Two, I’ll explore the philosophers who approached surrender in subtler, more abstract ways—through the lens of resistance, relation, and exposure: thinkers like Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas, and Derrida. Their work reminds us that surrender doesn’t always look like falling to our knees—it can also look like opening to difference, being touched by the Other, or allowing ourselves to be changed by what we cannot master.

Surrender

Surrender had always seemed like a picturesque or fairytale word in my life. Even maybe embarrassing at times, even if on a subconscious level it’s all I needed. But to — simply surrender? Just surrender, they’d say… in this world. What does that even mean, and how is that accomplished?

Since studying philosophies and even astrology, I recall one of my teachers very on the level saying something about surrendering, or no – he didn’t use the verb – he used the noun surrender with regard to coming to encounter your own life… your own birth chart. Somehow what he said struck me to my core— it was honest and it was real time.

Are we agents or are we subject? Of course, we are both.

While knocked down recently by a viral stomach bug passed on by my toddler, and doubly knocked down by a layered severe double migraine (twice), I was forced into an encounter the part of myself that might consider surrender in life. I did consider it.  During those days all by myself for hours on end experiencing.. I’ll finally admit…  torture by my migraine. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I am the only agent in my own life, but I have a relentless capacity for doing and pursuing. Recently, I had found myself unable to escape this… Unable to imagine a way out or a way of being different. It seemed life was requiring me to be on, to be vigilant, to be responsible, to be what I”ve already created… to take care. And time has been seeming to be more condensed, we are all feeling this.

But this forced encounter with surrender gave me insights that I don’t know I could’ve gotten any other way. As I now try to remember some of the most poignant points that came to me in my state of oblivion or delirium. —

I think the biggest was an awareness to how we resist— we resist, hold back, separate, keep at arm’s length Existence… or the rest of Existence…. As though we actually could resist Existence. And maybe we sort of can for a bit. Thinking of these large words— surrender. Resistance. To me, they relate to how Existence/God interacts with itself (each of us a part of that). A tiny droplet in the ocean could never resist enough to not be consumed back into the deep. Because I believe that we are all God and God itself is existence coming to know itself. And so we each play out our own micro drama of the macro drama in real time.

But Existence maybe wants and has to resist Itself in order to explore and create. To inter-act.  And we all feel this heroic pull to contribute to that learning and that creation.

But then I came to know myself better again by forced surrender – I am broader than the box I’ve been fitting myself into painfully. I need to spread out. Or I’m going to die. I surrendered and gave myself back to the deep (surrender— to give over). And I remembered to trust life or my own fate on its own terms as a good thing…

Now I’m ready to resist again and feign separateness to create…. or to put it more compassionately, I am ready to stand firm again (resist— stand up or against) but aiming for less rigidity… so maybe I will be reabsorbed or I will give myself back to the deep more willingly from time to time. Again and again while living.