There is a hidden architecture in the way we live and respond to the world …..a kind of spiritual geometry that shapes our inner landscape.
Resistance is angular. It has edges and corners, built of muscle, memory, and fear. It shows up as tension in the jaw, the held breath, the clenched hands. It says, “No, not this,” and erects invisible walls to protect what feels threatened. Like a square, it gives structure and boundary, but it can become a cage if we never learn to open the door.
Surrender, by contrast, is curved. It is the circle, the spiral, the arc. It is not collapse, but release ….. the softening of what no longer serves. In surrender, the breath deepens. The body opens. The heart listens. There is movement again…not away from pain, but through it. It says, “I trust what I cannot yet see.”
Between these two …. resistance and surrender ….. is a sacred tension. One teaches us where we’ve been hurt and wounded. The other shows us how to heal. Both are necessary. But it is surrender that transforms resistance into wisdom.
To live spiritually is to become aware of the shapes we take on….. and to choose, moment by moment, which geometry serves our soul.
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
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