Learn to yield and be soft

If you want to survive.

Learn to bow

And you will stand in your full height.

Learn to empty yourself

and be filled by the Tao

….the way a valley empties itself into a river.

Tao Te Ching

I got in the car after dropping Andrew and Lizzie off at school this morning and began driving along a street I drive on several times a day at least. I pulled a u-turn in the middle of the street to head back home and looked in my rearview mirror and noticed a car was right on my tail. I must have cut him off or he was in a very big hurry. I felt the resistance, even anger, rise in me as he continued to tail me down the street. I began breathing as I do when I encounter an edge within me. If I don't breathe, I end up jumping up in my head to figure it out, where I usually then will call people names in my head and judge the holy living you know what out of them. So, thankfully, I breathed. After a few seconds, I found myself simply pulling over to the side of the street, allowing him to pass. No fight, no push, no bullying back, just surrender. He pulled in front of me and took off. As I drove along slowly, I felt a feeling I don't know if I can describe; maybe it was empty, clear, present. I noticed the golden trees blowing in the wind and witnessed the most beautiful view of the foothills around me, one I had never noticed before on a street I have traveled down countless times. 

Beauty rises in surrender. I have always been such a fighter. Fighting against what ails me; on the outside and on the inside. Lately I have been practicing yielding; to those who I want to fight, whether it is the driver behind me or the anger I feel when someone I love is suffering. I yield rather than fight and then something opens. It is the beauty of the moment I am in. There is power in surrender, a power very different from the one I feel when I fight.