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.

Surrendering to not knowing

These past couple of months have been extraordinary. The world shut its doors against the COVID-19 virus. And we cannot see the future.

There has been a lot of talk going around on social media about people needing to find things to do to while away their time in isolation. Personally I haven't had time for any of that. I have been busier than ever bringing the studio into an online state, battling technology, helping staff and students battle technology, dealing with change at every turn, being frightened.

Frightened of what? For me, not so much of the invisible virus, but of the impacts to our wonderful yoga studio, our yoga community, our neighborhoods, our livlihoods.

Part of the challenge has been that we cannot plan for this. We do not have a set period that we can expect this to go on for, and hey presto, by such and such a date we will all be back to normal.  We cannot even be sure what normal will be on the other side of this pandemic. Even today as I write we are awaiting the results of todays National Cabinet wondering if maybe we can start going out again soon, maybe the studio can open again soon, as they plan to ease restrictions. But we don't know, and we do not know if we might have to close again if the dreaded second wave comes.

Isn't it so that the not knowing is one of the hardest things? When we recognise that we radically DO NOT KNOW we become aware that things are not within our control. But here is the thing. They never are! All this so called knowing, based upon the predictability of so-called "normal" is pretty much an illusion.

Vidyā - the veil of limited knowing

Of course it is not that we don't "know" anything. The power to know is an innate power of Consciousness. It is the limitation of that power of knowing that we are encountering in life, and that is what is scaring us.

We can understand this limited knowing, vidyā, as one of those limitations that Consciousness takes on in order to become immament, in order to manifest as us and everything we perceive. It is the limitation of the power of Consciousness known as jňāna-śakti.

Vidyā is constantly pointing us back to jňāna-śakti. In the words of awakened spritual teacher, Adyashanti:

"The door to God is the insecurity of not knowing anything. Bear the grace of that insecurity and all wisdom will be yours."

Surrendering to the limitation of knowledge

Well that is all very well for Adyashanti, awakened person, to say, you might be thinking. But this is exactly one of those times we can use the situation that is current in our lives to practice and potentially learn something really deep.  And Adyashanti is pointing directly at it. "Bear the grace of that insecurity" he says, by which I take to mean a surrendering to vidyā, not fighting it, "and all wisdom will be yours".

Wisdom is a kind of greater knowing, a wordless, conceptless knowing. In Sanskrit, widom is a translation of jňāna. What Adyashanti is pointing to is a great potential for breaking through the veil of our limitations to be more intimate with Consciousness itself, that which he has called God in this quote.

Noticing the difference between grasping to know and surrendering to not-knowing

Take a moment to sit. Be still. Be quiet.

Connect into your plans for the future. They do not need to be big plans, they might be a plan to log on to do a yoga class tomorrow, or to take a walk to the coffee shop to pick up your take-away. As you do so, feeling your way, sense the resonance of the thought plan, to do a yoga class or walk and pick up coffee or whatever it is. Take your time with this, especially if feeling the resonance of a thought is a new thing for you.

Stay with that resonance for awhile.  Feel into the assumed certainty that you will take that online class or that walk with the coffee stop. What does that certainty feel like. Beyond the thought construct, find the feeling in the body.

After a little while begin to shift your attention to all the things you don't know - not knowing when you could take a yoga class back in the studio, not knowing how we will recover economically as a nation, all the "not knowings" that are here right now, whatever they are.

And sense into the feeling of it all in your body. Beyond the concept and beyond the emotion of fear and uncertainty, find the feeling tone in the body.

Allow yourself to welcome that feeling tone, to settle into it, to relax into it, to love it for its own sake. This is not a trying, it is an allowing. Surrendering.

Staying with this, surrendering to this insecurity, to this entire feeling of not knowing. Stay with it. stay with it.

The longer you can stay with it, the more fully you are able to surrender, the greater the potential for the blossoming of wisdom.  Which, by the way, may not be a bolt of lightening, but a simple, settled grace of deeper knowing than the mind could ever have.