Stop Fixing, Start Surrendering

My Raw Truths on the Tao of Becoming

Life has never whispered to me gently. Rather, I find that it crashes in like a tide, sometimes violent, sometimes sly, but always with the same sacred intent which is to invite me into the unknown.

For most of my life, I fought that invitation—gripping the known, demanding answers, rushing the unfolding. But recently, through a deeper immersion into the Tao, and drawing quiet wisdom from Buddhism and the Kabbalah, I am learning to accept that difficulties aren’t punishments. They are sacred, trembling invitations for transformation. They are gateways, not barricades.

Buddhism teaches that clinging—whether to joy, comfort, identity, or control is the root of suffering. Kabbalah whispers that breaking precedes mending; that the shattering of old vessels is a necessary prelude to the emergence of higher realities. Taoism, in its ancient playfulness, laughs and reminds me that the river carves the stone not by force, but by surrender.

So I am no longer trying to “fix” life when it delivers discomfort. Instead, my modus operandi is in learning how to inhabit the wilderness of uncertainty.

That’s a strange thing to admit, especially in a world that urges us to “fix it,” “hack it,” “manifest it faster.” But the Tao is teaching me otherwise, namely, that rushing through discomfort is like yanking a flower out of the soil because it hasn’t bloomed fast enough. In trying to skip the tension, I uproot the very seed of my transformation.

Living in this tension, particularly the tension of opposites, has become the heart of my current journey. Life and death. Joy and sorrow. Clarity and confusion. I once imagined that true spiritual living meant transcending these tensions, floating beyond them. Now I see that it’s about standing firmly in them, breathing into both ends without collapsing into fear or certainty.

Death, especially, has come into sharper focus. Not just physical death, but the smaller deaths—the deaths of old selves, old dreams, old illusions. In the West, we shun death as failure. But Taoism, Kabbalah, and Buddhism reframe it as sacred recycling. Without death, life would stagnate. Without endings, no true beginning is possible.

The Tao whispers that nothing is truly lost… that everything merely changes form. The river doesn’t mourn the melting of the snow. Instead it becomes the river because of it.

And the butterfly, well it doesn’t pity the caterpillar it once was. It becomes what it was meant to be only through its dissolution.

In my own life, I have sensed a profound letting go underway. A crumbling of old maps. A surrender of what I thought I needed to become. It’s humbling, terrifying, and exquisite. It feels like walking blind into a dense forest, not knowing if there’s even a path ahead. And yet, the Tao says: The path is not something you find. The path is something you become.

There is a wild courage needed to stay in this wilderness without trying to build a quick shelter of false answers. I am continuing to learn how to live without a net, without guarantees. To live where the “how” and “when” are none of my business. To stop shoving at life in panic because it hasn’t delivered on my timeline.

Because I find that when I push and rush, I miss the larger magic. I miss the slow alchemy that manifests something deeper and more exquisite than I could have planned.

Buddhism tells me to “abide in the now.” Kabbalah tells me to “reveal the light hidden in the brokenness.” Taoism tells me to “trust the unfolding.” They are all the same invitations to surrender into the unknown with trust, even reverence.

Today, I wake up each morning not asking what can I control but how can I participate in the dance unfolding through me? I greet the unknown like an old, mischievous friend. I bow to my difficulties as wise, if unruly, teachers.

And when fear rises—as it always does—I remind myself that this is not exile. This is the wild, sacred country where true transformation happens. And I have finally accepted the invitation.

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Diamond Michael Scott

aka The Chocolate Taoist