Standing in the Rain

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.

The only safety lies in letting it all in —
the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures, and success.
When loss rips off the doors of the heart,
or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

— Danna Faulds, Go In and In: Poems From the Heart of Yoga (2002)

What if “allowing” isn’t about surrender at all, but about remembering that everything moves? When I fight what’s happening, I’m really fighting impermanence — trying to keep joy from leaving or pain from arriving. I dam the stream not because I hate the current, but because I want one moment to last.

Faulds says, “The only safety lies in letting it all in.” Every storm gives way to calm. Every wave collapses into stillness. When I allow this movement instead of resisting it, I begin to see the continuity underneath — the quiet awareness that watches it all come and go.

Addiction promised to stop time. The high created a bubble where nothing could touch me, where the world stood still. But that stillness wasn’t peace — it was stagnation. And it never lasted. The perfect high always ended, and I spent the rest of my time chasing it, trying to dam the stream again, trying to freeze what refused to be frozen.

There’s a peace that isn’t about fixing anything. It’s not watching the storm from a distance — it’s standing in the rain, drenched and shaking, and choosing not to run. It’s feeling the ache in your chest and saying, I can hold this. Not because you’re strong, but because you’ve learned that fighting it only makes you more tired.

Recovery, too, is weather. But I’m not watching it pass from some safe window — I’m in it. The craving that grips my throat, the shame that crashes through at 3 AM, the rage that comes from nowhere. Allowing isn’t observing from the still center; it’s sitting in the middle of the storm inside me and not reaching for an escape hatch. This is what surrender actually means — not giving up, but giving in to what is. It’s learning that I can hold what I used to run from.