Practice of Surrender – Reflections on Infusing Desire with Humility

I have a daily 30-minute practice of journaling in the morning that often transforms into writing poetry, and I committed to writing one essay a month that weaves poetry together with personal insights. Most recently, I launched Letters from Between Worlds, where I offer guided contemplations, essays, poetry, and reflections centered around one theme.

Keeping these commitments is not a struggle for me. What can feel overwhelming is the desire to create something that is authentic and at my creative edge, something that speaks from a place of truth within me and perhaps stirs something within others.

For over a week now, I’ve been noodling with what to put on this page. There are some insights that feel too raw and unprocessed to share. There are others that feel too formulaic, shaped more by what my mind thinks would be appealing than by what is truly speaking from my soul. I have found myself in a kind of limbo, waiting for that creative impulse that feels like a complete “yes” to reverberate through my body.

So what to do when the desire to create is present, but what wants to be created has not yet fully revealed itself?

The answer that keeps coming is to balance surrender with the desire to create. Surrender does not necessarily mean stopping my commitments, unless one day they no longer fit my soul’s calling. Instead, surrender has meant holding each desire lightly and asking, What are you asking of me today? It means trying to listen without allowing my personal agendas, fears, and uncertainties to immediately take over.

Surrender has meant trusting the answer that comes from my heart, even when my mind objects. Sometimes, when I ask, the answer is, Not yet. Relax. Go for a walk or clean your desk instead. Another time, a small insight will come, but it is not yet within my grasp. The answer is, Touch this lightly, but don’t grasp too tightly because it’s still forming. And sometimes the answer is, You may want to write an essay, but today a poem is coming, so get ready.

Then there are the times, like today, when the answer is simply, Okay love, let’s start this creation.

I have started putting together a few retreats for 2027 with some wonderful collaborators. I am deepening my practice of dance as I learn how to teach. I am being called to learn how to facilitate embodiment practices, and there is a faint but persistent call toward public speaking engagements. It feels like the makings of a wonderful, service-oriented creative life.

Yet almost as soon as I can feel the excitement of what might be emerging, my mind begins to hijack the process. How will you make enough money? Perhaps you need to keep doing what you already know. What if this doesn’t work? What exactly are you building? My mind wants a plan, a destination, and preferably some evidence that I will arrive safely.

But that is precisely where the practice begins.

Each day, I surrender my desire to know and ask again, What are you asking of me today? Sometimes the answer feels like clear forward movement: work with a collaborator, research a certification, have a conversation, or take one tangible step toward something that is emerging. Sometimes it feels like a stop sign, indicating that I may have made a wrong turn and asking me to reconsider a previous choice. And sometimes it simply feels like waiting for something within me or outside of me to change.

I have sometimes asked myself why I don’t just surrender completely, without holding any desire to do anything at all. Why not simply let life unfold without trying to create, pursue, or become anything?

But I don’t believe surrender means becoming passive.

Surrender alone does not create the containers through which my soul can express itself or serve in this world. There is something sacred about desire. Desire can be the current that manifests love into form, moving us toward creation, connection, service, fulfillment, and perhaps even prosperity for ourselves and others.

The difficulty is that desire can easily be captured by the mind. A living impulse can become a fixed idea of what success should look like. A desire to serve can become a need for validation. A creative calling can become a demand for perfection. We begin with something alive within us, and then the mind tries to possess it, define it, and control exactly how it should come to be.

For me, this is where surrender becomes essential. It is not about giving up the desire. It is about honoring the spirit and intention of the desire while releasing my grasp on what it must look like, when it must happen, or how it must unfold. I can participate fully in what I feel called toward without believing that I am in control of the outcome.

Perhaps this is the balance I am learning: desire gives me a direction, while surrender keeps me open to the path. Desire asks me to participate in bringing something into form. Surrender reminds me that I cannot fully know what form it is meant to take.

The pattern of the mind to coerce desire into control is so strong that this practice of surrender must be performed every day, as reflected in this poem.

Practice of Surrender

-Tejal Tarro

As the poem states, “the mind has minimal perception.” Yet many of us, especially in the Western world, have been taught to believe that everything can be solved through our rational minds. We are taught that if we think hard enough, plan carefully enough, and make all the right choices, then our lives should move smoothly and we should be able to avoid suffering.

Humility asks me to recognize that my mind does not have clear perception. It is veiled by conditioned patterns, past experiences, fears, and assumptions about what should happen next. What feels like certainty is often simply a familiar pattern of thinking. What feels like knowing may sometimes be fear disguising itself as wisdom.

Humility also opens me to other sources of wisdom. I can listen to the body and what expands or contracts within me. I can listen to the quieter movements of the soul. I can receive wisdom through nature, through relationship, through experience, and through the unexpected ways life itself responds to my choices. This does not mean abandoning the mind, but putting it back into its proper place as one source of wisdom rather than the sole authority.

Humility is, in some ways, the radical acceptance that I really don’t control very much at all. Each day is, as the poem says, “truly only unknown potential.” I can make plans. I can prepare. I can act on what I know today. But I cannot guarantee what tomorrow will bring, how another person will respond, whether something will succeed, or what unforeseen change may alter the course of my life.

Perhaps this is not a limitation, but an invitation.

An invitation to release the exhausting question, How do I make this happen exactly as I imagine it? and instead ask, What is asking to happen through me?

There is a subtle but profound difference between those questions. One places me at the center, trying to orchestrate every movement of my life. The other asks me to become a participant in something larger than my own plans. It does not require that I stop acting, creating, or pursuing what I desire. Rather, it asks me to act without the illusion that I can control where every action will lead.

I realize now that I have been practicing this surrender in the very act of trying to write this essay. For over a week, I thought I was waiting for something to say. Perhaps I was actually being asked to listen for what wanted to emerge. The uncertainty, the waiting, and even my frustration with not knowing became part of what this essay was asking me to explore.

And perhaps this is what surrender ultimately means to me: not giving up my desires, but releasing my insistence on knowing exactly where they will lead. To keep listening and to keep moving when there is movement. To rest when there is rest. To reconsider when I encounter a stop sign. To let go when something is no longer mine to carry.

And each day, when I once again find myself wanting to know what comes next, perhaps I can return to the same question:

What are you asking of me today?