Surrender | Matter to Matter, Energy to Matter, and Remembering your PIN Code at the Bank

Your “higher self” explained in the simplest of terms we can all understand.

Here in this book called Surrender, we’re talking about giving in to a higher power. Yet for those of us who haven’t quite been able to put a finger on what that really means or what it looks like, I’m going to shower you with examples.

Here’s one of my favorites.

You’re at the ATM, the abbreviation for what they call in the United States the Automated Teller Machine or the bank machine. It’s where you put in your bank card, your secret pin code or numbered password, and you withdraw cash.

Remember I used to go to Las Vegas quite a bit as a kid and so I remember what it was like to see money pour out a machine. This new-fangled ATM invention was awesome: you were always a winner!

Years later, I realized it was your own money you were withdrawing. Much less fun.

But I digress.

Conscious and Unconscious Mind (and Memory)

The important thing about this ATM is you need two things, well, three things:

1. A bank card
2. A PIN code (password) and, ideally,
3. Money in the bank to withdraw.

If you don’t have all three, you’re not going to get very far.

#1 and #3 are physical items. You need the actual card to physically insert into the machine and the money, the dollars, the euros, need to be in the bank to get them out.

It’s that #2 that can be tricky sometimes.

Even if your pin code is part of your zip code (not recommended), the year of your birth (probably the worst pin code), or the month and day of your birthday (really, you still do this?) and you use it on a regular basis, there are moments when we just can’t remember it.

Here’s what often happens.

You’re standing there in front of the machine and if there are people behind you (external pressure, forces beyond your control), it can make you a little nervous because they also want to get to the ATM and they’re in a hurry. Added pressure.

You insert your card and all of the sudden, your mind goes blank.

These are a series of four numbers you might type in on a weekly basis. If you’re like most of us, you haven’t changed these four numbers in years–if ever. In fact, you probably don’t even know how to change them (I admit, as techy and password cautious as I am, I don’t know how to change my bank pin nor, even worse, have I even tried).

We have these four numbers embedded in our minds, almost branded into the back side of our forehead to the point where we don’t even need to think (remember this verb, it’s important for later) about what the pin code it, we just know it.

Yet there we are, we haven’t changed the numbers in years and for some reason, we can remember them on this particular occasion.

Matter to Matter

It’s been so long without a numbered list, it’s time for a list of verbs. Here’s what you’re going to do next.

1. Try to remember
2. Try harder to dig through your memory
3. Doubt yourself
4. (Psychologically) kick yourself because this is silly, right? You know this.
5. Try some more
6. Probe
7. Push
8. Look behind you (are the other people getting antsy?)
9. Laugh (because this is ridiculous)
10. Worry (your brain is going, your memory isn’t what it used to be)
11. Breathe. You’ve got this. You know this.
12. Ask why it’s not coming back.
13. Try again
14. Put your fingers onto the keyboard and often:
15. Close your eyes (this occasionally works)
16. Purse your lips
17. Curse quietly, increase heart rate, cancel the transaction, and walk away.

Ever had one of those? Some of those? All of those? It’s so common, it happens to the best of us. Wait, it happens to all of us.

What happens next is the good part, the part that’s often hard to understand yet, remember, we’re in a book called Surrender, the part we want to get better at, the “transaction” we want to practice and make the goal.

Energy to Matter

You take a few steps away from the ATM. You probably glance at the people still in line and maybe you shrug your shoulders or say something as an excuse. Well, if they even noticed you couldn’t remember your pin.

You take a few more steps.

You doubt your memory.

You might even worry slightly about your sanity, your brain. Maybe you had a mini stroke. Maybe you’re older than you think. Maybe you’re losing it. Maybe you had too much to drink last night. Maybe this, maybe that. You’re doubting.

Often what happens next is yet another external factor comes into play. Since you’re so focused on your memory and your pin code, you’re not paying attention to your surroundings. Maybe a bicyclist flies by and almost hits you. Maybe you walk into the street and a car zooms by. Or you just take steps away from the ATM keep trying to remember.

At some point, usually only in a matter of seconds, your concentration, your focus, your awareness goes from the ATM, from the pin code to something else, anything else.

Where were you heading next? To the supermarket? To a friend’s house? Home?

Your thoughts veer away from the pin code finally.

Then, all of the sudden, without having expected it, without trying for it, and without focusing on it, the pin code comes to you. Depending on how you best get your information, it will come to you in different ways.

It could come to you as a visual where you see the numbers on the number pad and you see your fingers moving over the numbers and pressing them in the correct order. Or maybe you hear the numbers, maybe in your own voice, come to you. Or you see the numbers in front of your mind. Or you just feel it and you know them again.

Of course, you always knew them. There were always there.

But now they’re back.

Often, hopefully, you’ll smile, you might laugh a little at yourself. One to not do is to get mad at yourself, frustrated or angry or sad or worried.

Your subconscious just gave you the answer. This is what we wanted, right? The pin code. Yet how we got it is key.

Remember back when we were trying so hard? We were pushing and prodding, frustrated and anxious. It didn’t come to us. Even if we had stayed in front of the machine for another 10 minutes, it probably wouldn’t have come to us. Maybe 10 hours.

Yet in a span of something more along the lines of 10 seconds, we had it. Boom, just like that.

Matter to matter versus energy to matter.

The “matter” is on a certain level. Say, trying or using our conscious memory to try to make it happen. We’re using what we know to get an answer.

When we take the steps away from the ATM, we are giving up, we’re giving in (to that higher power) and we’re getting out of the way–we’re getting out of our own way.

Then it happens. What we had been trying to so hard to achieve, what we wanted, where we had focused our energy, it didn’t go away. We know we still want to know the ATM pin code. We also know that we know the answer.

But we’re in our own way.

We then surrender to a greater power, a power, a knowing that is already in our own selves, to get the answer.

We then get the answer with less effort (in fact, usually zero effort), less time, and in an unexpected way–or even to the point where we thought we gave up on “trying” to get the answer and we were moving on.

This is surrender.

This is the simplest, most real-life-situation example I have come across to illustrate how surrendering works in our lives.

This was a pin code. Four numbers. An “easy” one.

What if we follow the same process with other answers or goals or desires in our lives?

What if we wanted not to know just our pin code but what chapter we should write in our book? Maybe what job we should take? What to say to that girl you met yesterday? How to buy the house you wanted? How to heal your wounded or infected or diseased body?

This list is a tiny one.

Surrendering is the key to getting the answers in a different way, through some simple–but not always easy–steps that we can learn to improve in.

Let this chapter sit with you.

Try, push, prod, make an effort. Know what it is you want, what’ your’e after, make it clear.

Walk away, take your mind off of it.

Surrender to the answer.

Photo by Yunming Wang on Unsplash

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