The Surrender Project: The Recap

Over the last handful of days I have been intentionally finding time to sit and just reflect on the last month as a whole. The Surrender Project was a large part of that month and a large reason for some of the growth and lessons I have taken away from it all. The process of sitting down and writing a recap of each and everyday forces you to think through situations that you might normally look past. Another reason I want to incorporate writing into my daily routine going forward, but probably not a 4,000 word detailed write-up because who has time for that while working a full time job? Anyway, I want to recap this project by reflecting on the takeaways and lessons as well as some of the experiences overall. It feels like there are two parts to it, the part of what I learned by writing everyday and the part of what I learned by surrendering to life in India for a month. These go hand in hand a bit, as the writing is tied into it all and honestly just helps provide a deeper gratitude for all of the experiences I had. Gratitude; the word that keeps popping up in my mind as I think about the last month of my life. I never really do traditional introductions mentioning everything I am going to talk about, so why start now? Let's just dig into gratitude for a bit and see where it goes.

I am so insanely, stupidly, yell-off-the-rooftops fucking grateful. It is hard to express into a blog where I can’t emphasize the intensity of the feelings I have through raising my voice or putting emotional emphasis on certain words, but I am beyond freaking grateful. Towards the end of the project, when I started feeling that calm peace come over me, I had a tiny fear that I didn’t maximize the project. I never hitchhiked through a desert, I never slept on a strangers floor, I never went out and partied, I never pushed myself to a breaking point like I had wanted. There are a lot of things I didn’t do. However, all of those expectations I had and didn’t meet fall away to nothing when I think about everything I did get to experience. One thing I like to think about is how many things did I get to experience that money cannot buy? It absolutely swells my heart with so much love and happiness for life to think about all of them. From connecting with the tea guy in Hyderabad and seeing him everyday for a week, taking pictures of his process and him showing all of his friends. To meeting a man because a pigeon pooped on me, to then going out with him and his friends to a restaurant at midnight and driving the city until 2:30 am, finding myself in some sketchy secret basement so they can buy cigarettes. To being asked to join a cricket practice where I then became an honorary member of the team, showing up to practice everyday for a few days, hanging out with the guys even though we only share a few words of the same language. To meeting my friend in Jaipur, who took me to a backyard BBQ in the country outside of a small mosque where we got high and cooked mutton. To everyday meeting up with him, hopping on the back of a moped with two other guys in front of me to cruise the streets in search of Chai and friends. To going shopping in some random guys backroom of his house in a part of town that never sees any tourists, only to buy bootcut jeans and a button down to wear to a muslim wedding the next day where 5,000 people attended. Riding home on that same moped at 2:00 am, freezing on the back as I think about where I am in that moment, passing cows and dogs and people sleeping on the streets. To going to Pushkar and really slowing down for a few days, finding the utmost peace in reading and slow walks, nodding to all the old men who are doing the same. To a random guy on the street driving me an hour and fifteen minutes to a town in the middle of the day, inviting me to a wedding in Delhi, a 10 hour drive away, but unfortunately not being able to go. To meeting Nico for 2 minutes in the line at the airport, only for a month later to meet up with him at a Sikh Ashram in northern India. Where I am staying for free and am finding myself at 9pm in the house of the saint with 13 other people around a table, everybody with their eyes closed meditating as the saint here, Babaji shares about life and guidance (this story will come). Or waking up at 3:45 am to go sit in meditation where 10 women sing and chant and play instruments that bounce off the walls, pouring their heart and soul into each word that just rocks your system. These are just the big highlights I can recap really fast, the memorable “wow, what the fuck is my life?” Moments as I try to grasp where I am and what I am doing. The feeling of amazement and joy that starts in my stomach and slowly builds up into my chest and throat, forcing a smile and maybe a watery eye or two, as I look away and shake my head because none of it makes any fucking sense that I get to experience life like this. That I can sit here now and reflect over the past month and feel a buzz of electricity in my gut and a feeling where I want express this energy, to yell it from a mountain where nobody can hear. To clench my fists up and fold over and fucking yell to release this feeling, this intense fucking feeling of pure astonishment and gratitude that I get to experience life this way. I know these words are doing it no justice, but the feeling you get when something feels almost too good to be true. Where you either want to cry or dance or shout or sing or just sit there with your hands on your head shaking it back and forth with a shit-eating-grin on your face, trying to grasp it, trying to soak it in, and trying to feel the depths of the aliveness in it. That is the level of gratitude I am feeling for this month. That I get to find myself on a friday afternoon asking a stranger for directions in a town that sees barely any tourists where the nearest bus stop is and he ends up driving me over an hour away to a city, sharing his life and asking about mine. How freaking lucky am I!? It is a humble gratitude, a moment where I ask myself what did I do to deserve the love the world has poured over me this last month. That is what it feels like, love. I feel so loved by India and the people here. In a weird way it is teaching me to be better at receiving love, something I have struggled with in the past. That just because I exist I deserve the love of these people, that I do not need to do anything in return, that they just want to ensure that I have the most supported and enjoyable time possible and they are willing to sacrifice anything to ensure it. Like that man who was on the bus going to see his family for the first time in three years because he couldn’t afford it and couldn’t get time off work. What does he do? He buys my dinner as a welcome to me and wishes me all the best going forward. The people I have had the absolute honor of sharing random meals with, sharing a chai with, or stopping for a conversation on the street. The hundreds of people who have shown me warmth through a smile and a handshake. I am so freaking grateful for it all. Some of this intensity is hard to express without sounding like I am trying to paint my life as perfect. If you have read my other blogs I hope you understand that it isn’t perfect, nor do I ever want it to seem that way, in fact I don’t think I ever want my life to be perfect anyway. I do want to express these things to share the depth of it though, the gratitude I have to even be able to feel life to this extent. There are a large handful of moments I can look back on and feel this same feeling from. Moments of the purest gratitude for the simple act of existing on this planet and getting to experience life.

The big moments are easier to reflect on with gratitude, especially the intense kind I tried to put into words in that last paragraph. But I am also so thankful for the ability to find slow time throughout this all as well. Days where I wouldn’t do much besides read, write, and find some good food. The amount of hours where I just sat and watched life go by, allowing my thoughts to go whatever which way they pleased, trying to soak in the simplicities of life that make it so incredible. I think this is a lesson that never gets old: the ability to find the beauty in the little things. A gift that I am grateful to have in the first place and one that makes everything so much sweeter when it gets practiced. I think it is so easy to look past the little moments, especially when I reflect over the last month where there were so many big moments that are incredible travel stories that I will get to tell. But as I mentioned in a blog not too long ago, the moments of sitting on a roof and sipping a tea while I get lost in a book are just as sweet as the Indian wedding. I would say this is a takeaway from the project as a whole, to maintain that gratitude in the little moments, to just bring awareness to each moment for what it is. Life is made up of little moments that almost feel like nothing, but they matter so much and being able to appreciate them brings such a light to your life overall. It is definitely something that I want to practice when I get back home as well, to find the beauty in the mundane. What a gift it is to be able to buy groceries, whatever we could possibly want, and take them home to our incredibly fancy kitchens and concoct a meal to our own liking, to sit down on a comfy chair where all of our senses work and we can taste the flavors of that meal. One thing I miss about the States are couches. They do not really have couches in this part of the world, or at least from what I have seen, and I miss just sitting and relaxing on a couch. Before I get too off track talking about couches and hardwood floors… let me go back to the point. It is all the little moments and when you find gratitude for them, the big memorable moments just feel like incredibly gifts from the world.

I am finding that this recap is going a bit in random direction but that feels pretty genuine to my blogs in general so far so I might just roll with it. I want to also write about my gratitude for writing and what it has given me this past month. After I finish this blog I will have surpassed 120,000 words; 150+ pages of single spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman font. That is a lot of freaking words to express over a month, an amount that I had no idea I would reach, enough for a 600 page novel. Not only has this shown me that I have it in me to write a large quantity, enough to maybe write a book one day (a life dream), but that something massive can be achieved with just a little bit of work every day over time. What a lesson in itself, that these goals that seem so big and so far away do not have to be. That no, they aren’t going to happen overnight, but just a bit everyday or every few days and you will get there before you know it. I am honestly proud of myself for sticking to this goal and writing to the extent that I did over the month. It feels really good to accomplish a goal like this. The part of writing that I am most grateful for is how much it helped me recap the month. The lessons I learned or realized only while I was writing about the day or events that happened. A friend pointed something out to me recently, that he could tell when I didn’t have a set theme for what I was going to write about because I would start with a long recap of the day. But at some point I would describe a random event and then dig into it for a long paragraph, extracting some lesson or takeaway or idea to think about. Writing allowed me to be so aware of every moment that I experienced, both because I wrote about every moment, but also knowing that I was going to write about it later, so to make notes of thoughts I had or realizations that came to me throughout the day. I became hyperaware of every part of my day, hyperaware of how I reacted to things, or how certain situations made me feel, or every emotion that arose. Basically, writing is a huge reason for the growth that I endured over this past month. I truly believe I would have missed out on a lot of these ideas or lessons had I not been reflecting on them everyday. That same friend mentioned how he was trying to journal everyday as well, even recapping days where he goes through the same routines day after day. He said through journaling it allows him to actually take something away from the days, to remember that certain event or conversation and be able to grow from it. It is a large reason why I want to continue writing going forward, of just sharing my thoughts and events. Because it allows me to reflect on the days that feel monotonous. It even allows me to feel the emotions of the moments over again. Like as I sit here and write this I get that tantalizing buzz of energy in my gut that is that deep gratitude I wrote about in the first paragraph. I get to relive that incredibly feeling, or recap sitting and shaking my head at all the moments I did, trying to grasp the depth of life and never quite being able to do so. Writing is straight up fun for me. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and working through moments in life that may seem inconsequential but finding more beneath the surface. It has also been incredibly rewarding and fun to have conversations with people who have reached out because of some point I made in my blog, either to challenge me or share their own personal experience with something like presence or releasing control. This project quickly felt more like a writing project than anything and I am okay with that. If there was a teacher to grade my writing, they would probably say I didn’t talk a whole lot about the idea of surrendering, well not enough at least. Everything I got to experience is purely because I let go of all control. But we will get into that in a moment. While this did start out of as a writing and photography project, it did lean towards writing a lot. I think the reason is largely because it is really hard to go out everyday and take pictures of things that inspire me and then share it. A handful of days I didn’t want to go out and take pictures or didn’t do anything that felt like I would be able to tell a story through the photo. So let's dig into that for a bit.

Photography. Something that has come to feel like a part of my identity over the last couple months, and honestly couple years. I know this is a recap of the month in India, but I want to write a bit about photography and my love for it to share the extent at which it is a part of my identity. As I am assuming most of you follow my instagram account you probably know that photography is incredibly important to me, as you would have to go back five or six years to find a picture that I posted that wasn’t taken with my camera. I absolutely love taking pictures, it has completely transformed the way I see the world. I see things as frames, as compositions for a picture, I notice colors more and depth of certain blues that I never saw before. It is my favorite story telling tool, and I freaking love telling stories. To express the extent that it means to me I think we should go back to Thailand for a quick story. About five days into Thailand Trey and I went to Sukhothai, a city known for its ancient runes. We woke up at 5:00am to catch sunrise and see the monks being given food by city members. We found ourselves in a certain spot with nobody around us and came across the monks walking across a lantern filled bridge just as the first light of day was illuminating the sky. I ran to a side and snapped a shot of the reflection of the monks walking on this bridge. Later that day we were on a bus and I was editing pictures with headphones in, specifically this one picture, when I had that same swell of gratitude come over me. Except this time it didn’t stop and pretty soon I found myself crying pretty heavily over this picture. The tears just kept coming as I sat there and realized how much I loved photography and how much it has given me in this life. I am not much of a crier, so this is a big deal. I think it is also not a common thing to be a grown man crying over love of a hobby on a public bus where anybody could see. There is a depth of love for photography and capturing moments that is ineffable, impossible to describe with words. It is a big reason why I took the leap to travel in the first place. It is also solely responsible for so many of my interactions and moments in India. The cricket practice wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t sitting there with my camera. So many people wouldn’t have approached me if it wasn’t for interest in my camera or because they wanted a picture of themselves. It has taken me places I would never have gone over the past five or six years. It has allowed me to connect with people in a deeper way, the tea guy, or the woman at the tea shop. I was just another customer before I started taking pictures of them. Photography is a large part of my life, and I think it will always be that way. The buzz of joy and excitement I get when I catch a moment where I couldn’t have set it up better if I tried. With all of that being said, I do not think I did my best work for this project. Yes, I absolutely love some of the pictures I was able to get, but I didn’t push myself and my photography skills enough. I didn’t take pictures everyday like I wanted to, I didn’t try and find too many different types of photography like I wanted to either. There are no regrets for this as I think it all worked out exactly how it was supposed to. But it is a reminder going forward to just keep my camera on my wrist as I go out and have these experiences. My style has changed a bit, as I have enjoyed more lifestyle photography than big sweeping landscapes. But maybe that is more so to do with the fact that I have been mostly in cities and less areas with banging horizons. Overall, I think there was more for me to do with photography, and definitely some moments where I kicked myself for not having my camera with me or not taking it out more. That being said, photography is still so important to me and I still refer to myself as a photographer from time to time. I know I will look back on all the pictures and be so happy that I have detailed memories of weird moments, of street life and what life was like as I traveled the world for a bit.

This is definitely getting quite long and I feel like I still have a lot to share. I think I want to dive into some of the lessons that I took away from this and want to continue focusing on going forward. Maybe just some random thoughts around the project as well, not necessarily listing things off. Going into this project I definitely had expectations of pushing myself more and getting more uncomfortable. I still want that but not to the same degree I felt going into this. I know that I want to experience a darkness retreat before I go home and I think that will be a level of discomfort and struggle that I have not known yet. Part of me also shifted my focus midway through the project, not necessarily consciously but by just letting the project flow. I realized I didn’t really want to get too uncomfortable in terms of living situations or physical discomfort. Yeah, there were times I felt sad and lonely and navigated those emotions, but I didn’t push myself the way I had intended. The focus shifted to the lessons of presence, awareness, and control. That to an extent there are other ways I want to find discomfort and finding a random house in a tiny town and asking to sleep on their floor stopped appealing to me when I really thought about what it entails. I found discomfort in sitting in the feelings of anxiety about the future and what I am going to do with my life. This feels like a discomfort that is going to be more practical to experience than a night of shitty sleep (note: for this project only. There are definitely times I want to find a random house and sleep on their floor). I realized that some of these desires to do uncomfortable things were coming from a place of ego, and the reason I wanted to do them was to say that I did. The book Four Thousand Weeks helped me rethink the “why” behind some of my desires and gave me a reminder that people really do not care what I do. That yeah, maybe a crazy travel story will make someone at a party say, “wow, thats crazy!” But in all reality they’ll forget about it 30 seconds later and focus on the beer they’re sipping on and if the shirt they're wearing is cool or not. A humbling reminder to do things because I want to experience them for me, not for any validation or accolade. I am not saying I am consciously making decisions just to be liked or be seen as cool, but I do think that that these things slip into decision making processes without even thinking about it. Such as going to a new country versus one I have already been to because then I get to add it to my list of countries that I have traveled. In reality, that list doesn’t matter at all, but the self validation or some form of ego pokes through, telling us that we would be cooler if our list of countries visited is one more. Or that I would be more of a true traveler if I traveled for 10 months instead of 7, even if I want to go home after 7 months. In reality it doesn’t matter to anybody and it is something to think about when making some of these decisions. To provide a deeper awareness to the “why” of the big choices I am making or moments of travel that I am seeking out. With the “why” in mind I found that I wanted to find discomfort in other ways, specifically more mental discomfort than physical discomfort, at least for this part of my journey. It was eye opening to realize that the mental discomfort can come from something as simple as sitting in a restaurant when a group of 10 hippies joins your table. That the social anxiety I felt in that environment was challenging and really uncomfortable and I took a valuable lesson out of that situation, one that feels applicable to daily life. The lesson of finding joy in comfort also came across a few times, another shoutout to Four Thousand Weeks for that one as well. That I really do enjoy the comfort of sitting in the sun and reading a book draped over a comfy chair. That just because I love growth doesn’t mean I always have to seek out uncomfortable situations, that it is okay to just be and exist in a comfortable space and enjoy it. Just like every other thing in this life I think it is important to have a balance, a nice balance between enjoying the comfort and seeking discomfort, because both have their benefits.

Maybe the biggest takeaway from this project as a whole and honestly the last few years of my life is that the magic to it all is presence. Yup, that P word that I throw around like Kit Kats’s on halloween. That I could sit here and recap every experience I had, every lesson, every emotion, and every takeaway and I could argue that at the core of them all is presence. There is so much weirdness in this thing that we call life. Life is fucking weird. We are a human with a consciousness on a floating rock the size of a tiny speck of dust in a universe that never ends, our life is a millisecond long, yet it is everything we ever know. Life is a paradox every way you try to describe it. Time is so short in the grand scheme of things but it is also forever in this lifetime. Nobody really knows what the meaning is behind it all, or the purpose of it, or anything. There are hundreds of different religions and millions of different spiritual beliefs. I can go on and on and make all of our heads spin with how whacky and unlikely life is. But I will cut to the point, that we never really know what is happening so might as well slow down and sit in what is right in front of us, the present moment. We only ever exist in the present. How we spend our present moments is how we spend our life. That there are a million miracles happening all around us at every second and if we can slow down our minds a bit and just witness life happening all the stresses and things that bring us down start to drift away a little bit. I am not saying you will never feel stress ever again in your life, nor would I personally want to never feel stress again, but might as well be in the moment and allow things to happen in their time. I say this from the position of somebody who struggles with practicing this on a daily basis. Somebody who is future looking and dreams massive dreams to the point that I remove myself from what is right in front of me. This is a challenge to everybody, myself included, to practice more of it. Put down your phone at dinner and taste the food you worked hard to create, enjoy the company of those eating with you, be aware that the sun is setting outside, feel the warmth of the food and the cool refreshing crisp of a sip of wine to wash it down. Appreciate the complexity of the now (I love this sentence). Gratitude is linked hand in hand with presence, that when you focus on what is around you now it is easier to be grateful for it. Go on a walk by yourself, no headphones, no distractions, just a walk. Look around you, notice that big tree on the corner that you have walked past 30 times and never actually seen, look at your neighbors flower garden and the different color combinations they have, notice the old building on the corner and how the brick has deteriorated in certain spots and how the glow of an afternoon sun makes it feel like it belongs in the hills of Italy, notice the birds chirping and how many noises are actually going on all around you, notice the smells or the taste of the air as you inhale through your nose, notice the crunch of the leaves or gravel on the sidewalk. I can go on and on and I know I sound a little crazy listing off these random things in life, but I am telling you the world becomes such a magnificently magical place when you slow down and just be a witness to your environment. I remember the first time I went on an intentional walk like this in college. I walked to the end of my street and stared at a massive tree in the boulevard that I have seen 100 times yet never really seen. For the next two years I lived in that house and every time I would walk past that tree now I would see it and say hi. I was blown away by how many flowers, trees, plants, and life I was missing that was happening all around me. Maybe you go on a walk and you just think that I am a lunatic and you do not care about the tree on the corner, and that is fine. But I would argue that even though we are in such little control of what happens in our lives, that we can control how we see the world. So might as well see the world in a way that feels magical and not dreadful. I definitely do not always do this and find myself oftentimes feeling annoyed sitting in traffic or dreading having to do something or lost in thought as I walk around my house. However, there are times where I do slowdown and do become aware of the beauty of life and I am finding that I become a better person when I spend more time in the present and filled with more gratitude for whatever this weird life brings me. Thanks for listening to my rant on presence for a bit, I know I am not the first one, or even the millionth, to talk about it but I think there is a reason it is becoming increasingly popular. Alright, hopping off of my soap box.

I lied. I want to add one more thought that came to me about the power of presence. Actually a thought that arose in meditation, with these exact words that I feel are so true and one of the best aspects of being present. I am going to quote myself on this, “presence forces the truest expression of self.” When we are present in a moment and not stuck in our head thinking, we are the truest form of ourselves because we are just acting or responding without thinking about how it is being perceived or thinking about the action itself. Another way to think of it could be that when you are present and not thinking you can act from your soul. Anyway, I wanted to add this tidbit in here because being genuine and completely yourself is the best way to be and all you need to act that way is to be present.

What else is there? Oh, maybe I can talk a bit about the idea of surrendering to life and what that has showed me. I realized how unique of a scenario I was in to be able to go on this project in the first place. Of not having a single definitive in my life and having my entire future be 100% wide open. I would say overall it took me on a pretty predictable path, that as I look to the future and the direction I am choosing to go that it isn’t anything too crazy. I didn’t meet some dude who offered me a job in Monaco or some girl who swept me off my feet. That I did have some crazy experiences that I am forever thankful for, but that the future didn’t drastically change. Maybe that is because I took on this project as a traveler in a foreign country and it brought me down a path of travel, which was inevitable. Maybe it is because this was only 30 days and something like this doesn’t really end for me. Or that maybe there was some crazy small event that started because of this project and I will see the outcome of it five years from now. Really it is too early to tell and I think it is something that will carry on, that I am not going to go home and start planning every single day in my life, that I think there is some magic to surrendering and being open to whatever life is presenting you. That is also such an exciting outlook to have as I continue on this surrendering path, that I cannot even dream up what life has in store for me and I have to just keep L-I-V-I-N to see what comes next. An approach to life where curiosity lies at the center, curiosity for each day and each moment. An anticipation of excitement for what is right around the corner, but a deeper trust in knowing that it will come so no need to go chasing after it, just allow it to flow in the timing that it does. This to me is what peace looks like. Peace in the presence of life while still having an excitement for whatever is next. Maybe I will just have to write a yearly recap to this project and how things keep falling into place through the act of surrendering to life. If this all sounds a bit confusing or you want a clearer picture, I encourage you to read The Surrender Experiment: My Journey Into Life’s Perfection By Michael A. Singer. If you all remember this is where the idea for this project came from in the first place and is an eye opening story of the magic that lies behind surrendering (which I could argue is just a fancy way of saying to live in the present moment *insert winky face emoji*).

There were a lot of lessons packed into this project as a whole. Most of them were not new lessons, just that I found myself in situations that emphasized a lesson in a new way. To close out this recap I want to do a bit of a personal reflection on the person I am now and if that changed at all over the last month. My answer would immediately be yes, that this is a new version of Henry that is different than the Henry I was a month ago. I do not think I am drastically different in anyway, but I feel like I uncovered a deeper truth to who I am. A large part was going through experiences where I could be self critical and really analyze the type of person I was and how I acted in those moments. I am proud of the way I handled some of the situations that might normally stir up people. Such as missing a bus that was completely out of my control. Normally this is a situation that might arise a certain response, maybe one of anger and annoyance where a person yells at the bus driver on the phone or demands a full refund for the ticket. Instead I realized that it was out of my control and went into a meditation on the side of a busy street in Hyderabad. Which honestly makes me laugh a bit that I responded that way. It is like missing a bus in downtown NYC and going into a meditation on the side of the busy street (Hyderabad has 11 million people). But I responded in a way that I can say is the way I hope to respond to other things that do not go my way in the future. Like if something goes wrong with a date and time or I find myself late to an event, I am going to choose the peaceful response of being aware that it doesn’t make any sense to react negatively to these events that life hands us. I think overall I am a lot calmer as well, a calm that feels confident in not having to be seen or express myself so fully in every situation (a bit ironic that I say that as I express my every thought into a blog). I am still a bit of an intense person and love to react to things and be apart of the group, but just more of reflection of me and nothing else. I have also learned that there doesn’t need to be these crazy responses to things that happen to us in life. I think about the idea of yelling or raising your voice in an argument and how little that does to benefit the overall situation. That when we respond to an inconvenience in our life with an expression of anger or putting anybody down, that we are just hurting ourselves as well. It is a rule of mine to never raise my voice at a partner in an argument, maybe a rule I also need to apply to getting into arguments with my parents (sorry dad, as I know I have yelled at you my fair share). I think the crucial part of this is just being aware, being aware of how we are reacting to things that happen in our lives. Did a guy cut you off in traffic and you freaked out and yelled in your car at somebody who cannot hear you? That might be a reflection of something else. Or a good situation to remind yourself that they probably didn’t purposefully try and screw you over. The reminder that the vast majority of people are doing their best and not actively going about their lives with a focus to sabotage yours. We just straight up aren’t that special for somebody else to go out of their way to do something like that, as we all just focus on ourselves instead. But being aware of how we react to different things, if we instantly want to lash out and place blame or if we can take events in stride and react in a way that defuses the situation. The awareness is key to growing and understanding and I find oftentimes people might not even realize they are reacting a certain way, or that screaming at that guy in traffic isn’t doing anything but hurting your own energy and your own peace of mind. All of this is to say that I appreciate the reminders over the last month to take a deep breath and to take something in stride, that oftentimes we are responding to things out of our control and if it is out of our control why respond negatively? Something that I find myself doing more and more is just being aware of the lack of control in my life and being able to respond in a way of peace and releasing whatever it is. Is your food taking too long to come out at the restaurant? What can you possibly do about it and how is your reaction going to effect yourself and others around you. Find peace in not having control over the situation and allow it to come when it does, that the kitchen is doing their best to get the food to you. If they forgot and it takes another 30 minutes? What can you do? Take it in stride, realize they didn’t do it on purpose to hurt you and there really isn’t anything you can do, that you will make the servers day if you say “hey no biggie! We all make mistakes, do not worry about it!” Instead of cussing them out and demanding a free meal. Anyway, I could come up with a million examples, but this is a personal growth aspect that I am proud to continue to realize in my day to day life. Obviously I can go into listing off the awareness, presence, and all the others lessons and how that has helped me too. But I think it comes down to the fact that I feel like my behavior and my persona is more at peace. Not peaceful in the sense that I am always sitting in the corner with my legs crossed and hands folded over one knee, smiling at the bugs as they fly around the room. But peaceful in the sense that my reactions to life feel more level headed and I find more acceptance in whatever is happening. Of course I am not perfect and this is an active thing I go through when something upsets me, that I have to consciously be aware of how I am reacting in that moment and choose the path of peace. That is the battle, it isn’t a learned lesson and then boom I will never get mad again. It is the awareness of myself in all of these situations and to be able to control how I react to things. I still feel the urges of anger or annoyance, but being able to be aware that I am not acting in the way that I think is best is where the change and power comes from. It is a challenging thing to admit being proud of oneself, something that I have discussed a few times so far in this blog. But I would like to publicly admit that I am proud of myself for who I am and who I represent as a human being. I am proud of my ability to take these life experiences and learn from them, wanting to become a better person who spreads an energy of light, not darkness. There is a deeper confidence in being able to admit I am proud of myself, one that isn’t to brag and think I am better than anybody, but to be in a place where I no longer fear how it will come across to admit something like this. I would like to hope we are all taking strides in our life to become a person who we are proud of. I also believe it is important to be able to give ourselves a bit of love and a pat on the back for the work that we do to become a truer version. Maybe this will have to be a blog on its own in the coming weeks. Anyway, I felt a lot of self growth over this time and for that I am grateful. I feel like there was so much living condensed into these thirty days that have shaped me and helped me become a truer version of myself. Something that I hope never stops happening for my entire life, just uncovering one layer at a time.

As I write this final conclusion I am sitting in my bed at the Ashram, just returning from a meeting with the saint here. He talked about gratitude a lot and that sometimes the deepest forms of gratitude are not expressed with a smile and happiness, but with tears. I haven’t fully broken down and cried about this last month but there were many moments where my eyes got watery as I felt this deep gratitude in my core. That feeling where it is hard to grasp the depth of the emotion. Almost a love for life that is so deep it feels emotional in a sad way, being unable to express the disbelief and thanks for what life is showing us or handing us. This is a really challenging emotion to describe, what deep gratitude feels like, but it is one that (ironically) I am grateful to have experienced so much over the last month. Life treated me so wonderfully and left me in a place both mentally and spiritually that is setting me up for whatever is next. Overall this project was so fun. It was a gift for me to be able to call this a project and feel like I had a task to accomplish, something that is just mine and something that can never be taken away from me. It is an encouraging thing to do and something that motivates me to think about what else I can tackle, what other projects should I take on and see where they spit me out. Maybe there is another theory I should test out around life, so if you have any ideas I would be beyond open to hearing them. As mentioned, I want to continue writing on this blog for the foreseeable future. I am unsure of in what capacity or how that is going to look going forward but it is something I want to hold myself accountable to. There will be stories about what my time here at the Ashram is, as well as full rundowns on that darkness retreat (whenever that happens). And who knows, maybe in a few days I will have a project pop into my mind. If not, I think I will keep sharing shorter stories of thoughts or lessons that I come across, maybe mixing in a few too many details about what I had for breakfast and a full rundown on my sleep habits. To really wrap this thing up I want to say thank you one last time. I have the utmost appreciation for those of you who read this blog and chose to be apart of my life for the last month. Whether you ghost read it or you sent a message my way, I appreciate it either way. If you have gotten this far and have thought about reaching out, whether it is to talk about this blog, say hi, get something off your chest, or just need a friend to talk to, whoever you are, I encourage you to reach out in any way you would like. And with that The Surrender Project officially comes to a close. Cheers.