Just do it

Before my trip to Shoshoni, I was bound by expectations for epiphanies. Surely just stepping into a spiritual place, I would return a clear minded being who found all the answers I could barely pronounce (my Sanskrit sounds something like a British person speaking Chinese). Oftentimes, what I thought could only be a philosophical question none other could conjure, I'd look through some spiritual books and realize every other yogi in the universe asked the same question, only with more words like "shakti" and "pujas."
What frustrated me, was that if all the spiritual questions were sisters, the answers were the Olsen twins, with slightly less makeup on. As I was searching for the inner self in the midst of "bubbly blond" and "deep thinker" masks, I was taught to surrender. The woman whose family didn't understand her new lifestyle had to surrender. Your head's been chopped off? Surrender.
So I did. I surrendered. At first, I did it because I was tired of staring at the wall of my dorm room. It was so much less productive than poking around on facebook and checking my email fifty times a day. But as I breathed into all those chakras that were taking forever to get aligned, things people said, things I did or didn't do, or might have done if Jupiter looked slightly different that night, came rushing to my head. All from years ago! That kid who called me fat in the 6th grade, I wanted to smack his head with a frying pan. I found my knuckles curling at my stepmother's comment that I had only gotten a haircut because it was the "code of youth"; I believe she said this to me when Walkmen were still cool.
If this was what happened to those who surrendered, surely I'd go insane by the end of the month; it was horrible! I didn't come here to deal with baggage from the past! Couldn't I just skip that part, and become a totally transformed human being who had a cool spiritual name and wore hippie skirts?
Unfortunately, no. In order to successfully release all things shitty in my life, ignoring them was, apparently, looked down upon. I had to let them go. It worked great for two seconds; I could feel all the tensions flow down and out my fingertips. Trouble was, they had a pesky habit of returning to me, and I'd seethe yet again at comments from years past. Then I'd let them go. Then they'd come back again. I realized I hadn't signed up for the fast track to enlightenment. Perhaps that would be the June yoga immersion program. For now, instant gratification only existed for movie people, and those for whom it was socially acceptable to want their Mommy.
Surrendering--as entertaining as it was for my roommate to see my face turn into a human tomato--got boring, and chores seemed like a vacation after taking several trips to my own mind. It was a clever trick they played, making chores seem like the next great thrill since True Blood. This could be, after all, the day I stop avoiding dishes, and people would see me scrubbing, and congratulate me on my true growth as a yogi and human being.
While it wasn't exactly a blast, doing the dishes turned out to be just as therapeutic as all the other chores I'd done. Nobody said a word, other than "hey, this still looks pretty dirty. Do it again?" Yet throughout the hour of scrubbing, washing, and doing mantra (I think I said "om namah shivaya" 1,000 times that day), I realized there was no solution to those obstacles life enjoys throwing than to just do it. It's ironic that my first mini-sized epiphany was also a slogan to a large corporation, but hey, maybe those Nike guys are onto something. Surrendering to the dishes wasn't about pride, or ego, or "I can be more spiritual than you!" It was just doing what had to be done. And there would always be more, so why try to argue your way out? Even if my to-do list was one hundred items long, if I was in the present moment of each chore, just letting the trash pickup and garden digging surround my entire being, it didn't feel nearly as intimidating.
While I'm still resistant to all "to-do" lists that have greeted me upon my return home, the tools of surrender continue to be useful. I only procrastinate three times out of five, and chores seem more fun, with my ability to chant cool sounding phrases that freak out my family. My ego has a tendency to keep getting in the way, but with each breath, and each tension that I can momentarily let go, I find surrendering, and "just doing it" to get a little bit easier. Plus I can wear cool hippie skirts while letting go. That helps too.

Namaste.