The Magic of Acceptance

May 5, 2024 is the day I was 100% sure I was going to die.
 
I didn't, though. This is how that happened.
 
It was the end of a guided waterfall hike in Sogeri, Papua New Guinea. The cars waiting to pick us up were parked 50 yards away. To the right of the trail we had been following through the jungle, we glimpsed a beautiful flat spot in the river, with rocks scattered throughout the flowing water, about 30 meters ahead of a steep frothy drop. My friend Sarah and I found a secure spot to sit in the refreshing cool water near the river's edge. The others were filming and taking photos. Sarah got up and walked out of the water. I was going to follow her, but I turned around and looked behind me. It was so beautiful. ​

The current looked reasonably gentle in the spot between me and a wide flat rock 5 feet away.  I decided to walk through the hip-high water to that rock so I could lounge in the middle of all of that beauty. The water surface was smooth and I thought the force of the current there was dampened by all the rocks around. That was ridiculously stupid of me, as I realized two steps later when the current swept me off my feet and towards the rapids at high speed. The far side of the river was lined by big rocks, and I managed to almost get to it, trying to get a handhold of something solid, but in a split second the current sucked me under the water and pinned me against a giant boulder. I struggled to free myself but the force of the water pummeling me was so strong. No matter what I did, it kept my back plastered to that boulder. I might as well have been superglued to it. 
While I was there trapped against the rock, many thoughts zoomed through my head. This is not good. That was so stupid of me. Why didn’t I just get out of the water? I can’t believe I got myself into this situation. I can’t move. This is crazy. This can't actually be happening. But this is happening. I need help. Is someone going to come and pull me out? {I had a vision of someone coming, grabbing onto my legs, and pulling me to safety.} But how could they get to me? No one can get across that current. And they can’t even see where I am, under water and this freaking rock. I actually might die here. How can I get myself out of here? What else can I do? I’m stuck. I’ve always thought drowning would be a horrible way to die. I might be about to find out what it’s like. But the yoga retreats I have to teach next month – I feel terrible if I can’t lead them because I’m dead. That will be awful for everyone who registered. And for everyone who came on this hike today. What a shame to die like this, because of my own stupidity. I don’t want my life to end today. I had a great life but I feel like I wasn’t finished with what I came here to do. I wish I had just gotten out of the water. This is not going to be pleasant for JM; I hope he’ll be okay. I racked my brain for some creative way to get myself unstuck but no matter what I did, I couldn’t budge. Eventually I realized there was nothing I could do to save myself and no one was coming to save me and I was going to run out of air. I’ve experienced divine intervention in my life more than once before and I briefly wondered if a Higher Power would intervene to get me out of this, but it didn’t seem so this time. Fair enough; I brought this upon myself and divine forces are certainly not obligated to get me out of every single predicament I put myself in. Serves me right. 
I don’t know how much time passed, a minute or two, but I knew I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. I finally completely accepted that I was about to drown. There’s no way out. I am going to run out of air. This is actually going to be when and how I die. I’ve always been curious about how I would die and now I know. So this is going to be it for me. My life is really going to end today. The silver lining: my curiosity would be satisfied at last; I would finally discover what’s on the other side. 
I put my attention on that instead of dwelling on how horrible the immiment drowning would probably be. Hopefully it would be over quickly.
That’s it then. Game over. Goodbye life. Let’s see what’s next.
This is the amazing part. In that moment of acceptance, I stopped fighting the current and completely let go of all effort and all hope of escape. My whole being relaxed, my body, my mind. It was so peaceful. I stopped holding my breath. Maybe there was a small exhale of whatever air I had left, or maybe there was just a small pause before the inhale. And in the tiniest space of the microsecond before I inhaled to let the water fill my lungs, something happened.
I was no longer trapped. For a moment I felt suspended in stillness, just floating, as if hovering weightless in space, and then I felt myself gently lifting – and I was thinking, wait, what’s happening? – and then I was moving forward, slowly at first and then faster, twirling and moving forward and tumbling, faster and faster, and it felt at first like moving through space and then I felt my body whacking into some solid surfaces and I heard the sound of water rushing around me and I was deposited conveniently on my feet behind a waist-high rock ledge at the edge of a thundering cascade of water, with my head and torso above water and just like that I was free and I could breathe.
I was stunned that I was alive, my life hadn’t ended, that someone/something pulled me out of there at the last possible moment, and I could see my friends across the stretch of rapids, but I couldn’t see them very well because of the spray from the falls, but most importantly I could breathe.
I couldn’t swim across to them because I would be swept over a thundering waterfall, so I perched on the ledge with one leg behind it for security, not sure where to go from there but mainly focused on the fact that I was alive. But a minute later the force of the cascade of water next to me suddenly intensified and started pushing me off the ledge. I realized I could still die or be seriously maimed today, but as I lost my leg hold of the ledge and the water pushed me forward I was able to propel myself across to the side to another rock ledge a couple feet away and pull myself up out of the water.
And then three brave hiking guides swam across the river at a place farther down where the current wasn’t as strong – but it was still strong; those guys didn’t hesitate to risk their own lives by jumping in - and they found a back way through the rocks and a channel of water to get me, and they guided me back to where they crossed over and they tied a rope around my waist just in case and we all swam across the river and I was reunited with my group and spoiled with hugs and towels and dry clothes.
I was unharmed other then a couple scratches, although the following day muscle pain set in, followed by assorted bruises, but it was all minor.
 
That is what happened, and these are my thoughts about it. 
I wish for no one to say to me anything along the lines of, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that!” or “How traumatic!” I wasn't traumatized and I'm not sorry I went through it. (Although once was enough, thank you, and I will never again try to walk into a strong current of water without an extremely good reason.) Knowing that it turned out well, I am incredibly grateful for the experience. I wrote a book about magic and synchronicities and divine timing, but never in my life have I experienced those things in the form of the difference between life and death.
It felt very clearly to me as if a Higher Power who was fully aware of the thoughts going through my head waited while I was trapped against the rock, letting me have my lesson, letting me absorb the potential consequences of my careless action, letting me comprehend fully that I could not save myself, letting me face death, letting me reach that point of ultimate surrender, and then said silently: But no, little one. Today is not the day you die. And in the exact moment before I let my lungs fill with water, gave the nod of assent to my four angels who had been standing by the whole time and who gently lifted me out of the grip of the current, nudged me to the far side, turned me around so that the current could take me feet first instead of head first through some kind of underwater tunnel between the rocks to the spot just behind the waist-high rock ledge that waited to stop me from going over the waterfall, protecting my head and spine from colliding with anything, making sure I landed nicely on my feet, fully conscious, totally unscathed other than a few bruises and scratches. 
If I had designed an escape from that situation, I don’t think I could have designed a better one. 
(Note of explanation about my angels: I can’t tell you when I first started believing I have four of them, but that idea came into my head at some point years ago, and although I have no proof that there are actually four, I will continue visualizing my team of spiritual protectors that way until proven otherwise. And I must tell you, my angels are awesome. I do believe that if angels get medals and achievement awards, mine should win everything. They’re the best. They’ve always been there for me when I needed them but this time they really outdid themselves.)

A couple minutes before these events, and the view from an angle we hadn't seen.

While I do believe that the fact that I’m alive today is a miracle that involved divine intervention, for the benefit of the skeptics and because I don’t wish to force my beliefs on anyone else, I leave room for the possibility that it was the act of acceptance and surrender that freed me from the rock. Something about letting go of all resistance, of totally relaxing. Maybe something about that allowed the current itself to set me free. And then the rest … the way I was spun around to travel feet first instead of head first through that convenient underwater tunnel to land on my feet behind that ideally-placed ledge was all a chain of supreme good luck…
Like I said, I personally believe divine intervention was involved. I also believe that divine intervention is happening around us all the time, in big and small ways, mostly in ways we don’t even notice. I do believe the Universe has our backs and we are in good hands, and I believe that is the most comforting, reassuring belief in the world. 
This is the concept of Ishvarapranidhana. My thoughts about that are in chapter 8 of Some Kind of Magic, and I will share this section with you: 
 
Pranidhana is most commonly translated from Sanskrit as “complete surrender.” Ishvara is the Source—or any other word you may choose to use for this indefinable Higher Power: the Divine, Infinite Intelligence, God, the Universe, etc. Ishvarapranidhana is the idea of surrender to a Higher Power—to a force greater than yourself. It means to accept that a Higher Force is in control, and to trust that it’s looking out for you. Essentially, it can be translated as: Relax. Trust the Cosmos. You’re in good hands.
Explaining why we might believe that an unseen Higher Power exists and is looking out for us, [our teacher] points out that none of us, with our conscious minds alone, can keep ourselves alive. We can’t even consciously control the basic physiological functions of our own bodies: the beating of our own hearts, the blood pulsing through our veins, the levels of oxygen circulating in our blood. All of that is totally out of our conscious control. And yet we are alive. Some Force we can’t see is keeping us alive.
And whatever this mysterious Force is that the Yoga Sutras have named Ishvara, it’s intelligent and powerful enough to keep my incredibly complex human body functioning in this dizzyingly intricate, magnificent world. So, I might as well trust that, a) there is some reason for it doing so, b) there may be a deeper purpose behind the events that unfold in my life, deeper than what I can see on the surface, and c) this Force is more than capable of sorting out whatever other complicated situations I face in life, without me needing to stress about everything or figure out every detail on my own. I’m not alone. I can relax.
 
Those words are even more meaningful to me now than the day I wrote them.
 
And a beautiful synchronicity – a few days after these events, I found a notification in my Instagram inbox. A woman named Valerie had tagged me in a story she posted a few days earlier. The story was a photo of the cover of Some Kind of Magic, and she had written: 
(Ishvara)Pranidhana
Surrender
This book found me exactly when I needed it
(Omg it’s 20:20 as I write this)!!!
 
This is the magic. This is the magic that is all around us, and with us, all the time, and those winks from the Universe are our constant reminders.
 
I know that one day it will be time for my life to end, and that will be okay. But I’m deeply grateful that May 5, 2024 wasn’t that day, and I will consider every breath I’ve taken since I emerged from that water to be a bonus gift.
 
I will also, from now on, give flowing rivers and ocean currents the full respect and caution they deserve.

The swim across.

The guys who jumped into that water for me.