An article by Sally Kempton, also known as Durgananda. She is an author, a meditation teacher, and the founder of the Dharana Institute. For more information, visit www.sallykempton.com.
By nature I'm a struggler, raised in the belief that if what you're doing doesn't work, the solution is to do it harder. So naturally, I had to learn the value of surrender the hard way. About 30 years ago, as a relatively early U.S. adopter of meditation, I was asked by a curious editor at a mainstream magazine to write an article about my spiritual search. Problem was, I couldn't find a voice for it. I spent months, wrote maybe 20 versions, stacked up hundreds of scribbled pages—all for a 3,000-word article. When I finally cobbled together my best paragraphs and sent them off, the magazine shot the piece back to me, saying that they didn't think their readers could identify with it. Then another magazine invited me to write the same story. Knowing I had come to an impasse, I threw myself down on the ground and asked the universe, the inner guru—well, all right, God—for help. Actually, what I said was this: "If you want this to happen, you'll have to do it, because I can't."
Ten minutes later I was sitting in front of the typewriter (we still used typewriters in those days), writing a first paragraph that seemed to have come out of nowhere. The sentences sparkled, and though it was in "my" voice, "I" definitely did not write it. A month later, I told the story to my teacher. He said, "You're very intelligent." He wasn't talking about my IQ. He meant that I had realized the great and mysterious truth of who, or what, is really in charge.
