Letting go by ‘Re-signing’

Among other things, enduring oneself means no longer fighting life within oneself. The more we manage to let go the lesser it’s “enduring” any more.
This “letting go” means giving up the notion that it should be different, in order to instead be with what is.

In this sense, giving up, resigning oneself can suddenly have a positive meaning – we do not try to control and direct everything any more, when we accept our powerlessness and we just let life happen as it unfolds.
This is how a very practical spirituality arises, beyond religion or esotericism: Life itself is spirituality enough when it is simply lived – and “left alone”.

Enduring ourselves. Easier said than done, isn’t it? We struggle with the bottlenecks in and the challenges of our lives… These often feel so uncomfortable that many of us have become masters at distraction and avoidance strategies – always hoping not to have to feel the pain.
Thereby however, the suffering continues to increase: we try to suppress our lives, which means that it can no longer flow freely and we perceive this standstill, this blockage, as suffering in many ways.
The Arabic poet and writer Ibn Kalakis (1138-1171) said: “Water that flows is full of good properties; when it comes to a standstill, it loses them.” If we are in constant resistance against our life and life is no longer “allowed” to flow, then this standstill is exactly what happens.

An important strategy for not having to endure (= feel) ourselves is our thinking. Our mind continuously tells us stories about ourselves – depending on our individual “programming”. Quite often we are trapped in inner dialogues with ourselves (we are the best or we are not good enough, we are too fat, too thin, too tall, too short…).
Our mind, our inner critic, judges pretty much everything that happens to us, and also what we do and how we behave – ultimately, ourselves as human beings. These judgment loops incessantly suggest to us that we are “not right” and that we have to change the world and ourselves so that “[at last] it’ll be okay” – instead of just feeling what’s going on in our bodies.

As a result of this evasive strategy, which rejects the here and now and ourselves as wrong, many of us develop the conviction that we have to make an incredible effort to control our lives and, preferably, our environment.
If we don’t succeed – and we won’t – it leads to extreme stress. As a consequence, we then double our efforts – pretty crazy, isn’t it?

This evasive behavior often has fatal consequences: various forms of depression and burnout, but also illnesses, allergies and much more. Often, especially at the beginning, there are less obvious phenomena that show that something in us “no longer flows sufficiently”: We may become depressed, we may permanently reach for food, for sweets, for alcohol or any other form of drug addiction … because we do not want to feel the stress and more importantly, what is underneath it.   All these strategies are evasion mechanisms and their consequences – so we do not have to feel our pain. As a result, our comfort zone narrows more and more and we move into a state of permanent suffering. From this protected space, we repeatedly face the challenges that we are confronted with in our lives with the same solutions and do not stop fighting our own liveliness in this vicious circle.
This is sad and also absurd, but these are the mechanisms that most of us have learned. 

Re-signing

In order to understand our own evasive behavior and not to automatically follow it, it can be helpful to look at the origin of words and to embrace any surprising changes in perspective. For example, the word “to resign” has a negative connotation in our language in the sense of “to give up in a depressed way”. However, resign comes from the Latin resignare and that simply means “to give back”!

We return it back to the universe, so to speak, and just stop wanting to change it and fighting against it. From a positive point of view, the attitude of resignation has a lot to do with surrendering in the right place. No longer fighting against what is can be very relieving! The well-known serenity prayer stemming from the American theologian, philosopher and political scientist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) sums it up perfectly: “God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It is easy to see why this saying is used in self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
So let’s start with the first sentence: Accepting things we cannot change with composure?
This is a tough pill for our minds to swallow, which of course we do not want to understand!
But this is precisely where the practical connection to spirituality lies, because the more we resist this form of surrender, the more we split off.
Our thinking tells us that everything has to be changed first before we can fully accept ourselves. Even if something should change in our desired direction, our mind quickly comes up with new reasons why it is still not completely “okay”.
It is precisely this separation, this denial of what is, that we need to overcome and surrender ourselves completely to the life we live. After all, our resistance and evasive strategies are precisely what creates suffering in the first place. It is fascinating how much Eastern and Western philosophers agree on this.

Here’s a quote from the Japanese Zen master Bankei Eitaku (1622-1693): 

A layman asks: “When I hear unexpected noises, such as thunderstorms, I sometimes get scared. This is probably because my mind is usually not really calm. How can I achieve that I no longer get frightened, whatever happens?”
Bankei: ‘If something frightens you, it is best to just be frightened. If you stop yourself from being frightened, your mind becomes divided.’
(Master Bankei: ‘The Zen Doctrine of the Unborn’)
An even older quote, originating in the West, comes from the Roman philosopher Seneca (1-65 AD), who said: “Fate leads the willing, but drags the unwilling.” In other words, the unwilling suffer in silence – that’s what happens to us when we constantly resist our own lives and just don’t want to “endure” and live what’s happening.
Of course, it is not about putting your feet up and giving up, as some might think. The Taoist Wu Wei, which is related to this topic, has therefore often been misunderstood in the West: it means acting by letting things happen (i.e. by not acting) – not in the sense of indifference, but in the sense of “refraining from acting against nature”, i.e. “not intervening”!

Courage and Humility

The courage to change things that we can change …: The word courage derives from the Middle or Old High German muot and means state of mind, passion; determination.
The extremes of courage are called arrogance and melancholy – in the middle of those two lies humility. In arrogance, the corresponding part of the personality knows everything better and constantly accuses itself, others and the world of being wrong.
This leads from evaluating to judging and further to condemning – obviously there’s a strong resistance to life as it is. .
Being in a state of melancholy on the other hand, means being depressed, something is being suppressed – again a resistance against (one’s own) life.
It is also from the perspective of this self-victimization that we perceive the world as false and unfair.
The word humility contains courage (Indo-European mo– = to strive for something) and service – old high German dionôn = (to) subordinate. It is therefore about actively pursuing one’s own red thread and questioning one’s own [first] programming – while at the same time subordinating oneself to life.
Thereby life can unfold in us as an individual manifestation – the overcoming of fear and a truly new freedom become possible.

Wisdom

The Serenity Prayer ends with the line, “…and the wisdom to know the difference”.

Is this always easy? No. Or maybe it is difficult, because it is our thinking that makes it seem complicated. Why don’t we just leave the distinguishing to life itself? When we allow life to happen with open senses, it often opens up almost by itself. So it’s about trusting life through our hearts.
This is exactly what is meant by the beautiful synonym for courage, which contains the French coeur, which does mean heart!
When we are in contact with our hearts, we make decisions from our depths and following our intuition – 

At the same time we don’t know what the outcome will be.
Maybe it will turn out the expected way, but maybe it will turn out differently.
It is important that we are kind to ourselves in the process – in other words, cultivate self-compassion – which, by the way, is the prerequisite for compassion with others.
It is very worthwhile to face our own “programming” – even if it is sometimes challenging – to question it courageously and, if necessary, to get help for such a process.

This courage, this endurance of oneself and this not-thinking-but-doing can lead to gratifying “side effects”: Finally, our lives can unfold in true freedom, our fear of death is reduced and our zest for life increases.
“I can’t change the circumstances, but I can change my attitude towards them,” says Edith Eva Eger (her extremely inspiring book ‘The Choice’ is hereby warmly recommended). 

This is how we overcome our separation and learn to live, to ‘surf’ on this one wave that is our life, until it breaks – it doesn’t get more practical than that. 

Roman philosopher Seneca once again: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult!”

by Hermann Haefele, ©2019-2025, first published in the magazine SEIN 05/2019, April 29, 2019.
Translated and slightly altered by Hermann Haefele.