I watched a spider clamor up the top of the shade and then up the wall of my bedroom. There was an instant when I relaxed inside and saw the spider so differently. The whole aspect of my experience shifted. The distance between me and the spider seemed to disappear and we were suddenly next to one another. Someone else might observe that we were actually some twelve feet apart, an observation so different from my experience.
It is such a pleasure to surrender to what presents itself, and I have the joy of experiencing this from time to time. It occurs when I surrender into a place of deep relaxation. One might say it is a deep opening to concentration. It is an effort of no effort. My mind takes a break.
It could perhaps be the touch of the firm mattress where I am sitting. It could be a plant rising from the ground in my garden to be seen and touched. There is a strange emptiness that arises when I experience some thing or some one with surrender. A vastness appears, and there is no attempt by my rational mind to put things into a familiar shape or form. The object of my attention and I seem to step into a field of emptiness.
What had appeared to have shape and form and distance becomes so close the we share the same space. Nothing has apparently changed, the person or the plant or I. But I seem to have shifted in how I am experiencing something. It happens by a simple transforming act of surrender.
Suddenly everything is different. My skin has disappeared and I am moving through space that no longer seems to exist. Simply because I have no longer given it shape or dimension, I have surrendered to whatever or whoever is before me. We have lost distinction and reference.
It is an encounter of deep pleasure, this simple act of surrender.