Surrender

There is no getting past it on the spiritual path. Eventually we have to surrender. Let go. Give up. 

What are we surrendering and what are we surrendering to? The mind wants answers to these questions, as if it will make a difference. (It won't. But let's look at it anyway.)

Patañjali points to surrender in the fifth niyama of the Yoga Sutra. Reading the fourth and the fifth niyamas together gives more.

II.44 svādhyāyad iṣṭa-devatā-samprayogaḥ

II.45 samādhi-siddhir īśvara-praṇidhānāt

44. From study [of scripture], a connection with one's deity of choice is established.

45. From submission to God comes the perfection of samādhi. (Bryant translations 2009)

In modern yoga schools, particularly in western culture, svādhyāya is often translated as "self study". It is not a wrong translation, it does mean that, but in practice, in the cultural context in which Patañjali was penning his sutras, it definitely meant scriptural study, which teach about the "self " in a spiritual sense. And in these two sutras it is quite clear that Patañjali is a theist. There IS a God, or Gods, since our "deity of choice" is to emerge from scriptural study (44), and then submission to that deity (īśvara) yields the fruits of yoga (45). So for Patañjali we are surrendering to our deity of choice. 

(Non-dual translator Swami Venkatesananda renders īśvara-praṇidhānā as "surrender to the indwelling omni-presence.)

What we are surrendering to is the larger than ego sense of self, call it god or universal Consciousness, Awareness, that which unfolds the entire universe into being and takes it all back again. That primordial hum or energy or om that is the fabric of the universe! But you cannot think this. No amount

The work to be done on the spiritual path is a process of stripping away all that we think we know about ourselves, all the stories we have about ourselves, and everything else. Stories are held in the ego's domain. And the ego is yet another story, the story of there being a separate me at all. 

The Tantric practice of deha śuddhi internalises this process in its ritual absorption. The body is visualised as having an internal fire into which the practitioner offers all those stories, knowing that all that is true will survive, but all that is untrue will perish. It is a purifying fire. (Learn this and other tantric practices from living teachers please, descriptions like this in blogs and books are not instructions!)

In other meditative work you can take a story, say a deeply rooted belief in one's innate inadequacy, and really hold it up for examination, not with the mind alone, but with the body: When you take this belief to be true, where and how do you feel it in the body? We do this in iRest where we are also encouraged to not only dialogue with a single belief but also to try on alternatives. What would be an alternative to this belief? Find a memory that would support that belief, or imagine an incident in your life which would support that belief, and feel that in your body. It doesn't take long before you find the deeply rooted belief loosening.

Here is the irony: ego is doing all this spirituality stuff to strip away our stories. In the end ego has to give up, so profoundly, it even gives up its attachment to its own existence story!

Surrender is saying yes, totally, to the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Surrender is a profound letting go. Letting go of all the stories you have about yourself and everything, every image or idea you have about yourself. I am good, I am worth it, I am not good enough, the lot.

See also my poem Surrender to the Beloved.