Primary Essay • Lost in the Woods, Found in the Heart: A Journey Through Surrender
Lost in the Woods, Found in the Heart:
A Journey Through Surrender
The next sentence you’re about to read could one day save your life: If you are lost in the woods, the most effective thing you can do to ensure your survival is to stay put and surrender the urge to try to find your way out.
WHAT?! That’s right—when you’re lost, doing “nothing” has been scientifically shown to be far more beneficial than doing “something” . Let that sink in for a moment… Studies show that wandering aimlessly burns energy, exposes you to predators, and depletes your hydration. Staying put conserves your energy, increases your safety, and makes it easier for rescuers to find you.
But as we all know, realizing you’re lost often triggers fear and anxiety. It’s incredibly difficult to resist the urge to try to ‘fix’ the situation with more and more thinking and moving. If you’ve ever been lost in the woods, you understand how much effort it takes to surrender that urgency, to calm your mind, and to become fully present and patient.
Lost in the Forest of Samsara
This experience mirrors what happens in our everyday lives. We encounter moments of overwhelm—whether from work, life circumstances, or difficult interactions—that feel like being lost in the forest of samsara, the tangled web of patterns and habits that keep us stuck. As the Shiva Sutras remind us, “Consequently, in your world of illusion, where you remain filled with insecurity and fear, these limitations are bondage. Here, being completely dependent on that illusive energy of knowledge and being without real knowledge, you are continuously doing right or wrong. So, being completely entangled in that fence you become just like a beast.”. We see in this quote that when we navigate our world from the mind, the ‘illusive energy of knowledge’ as the Sutras describe it, we bounce between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, left and right, but never feel secure or ‘on track’, we have no ‘peace of mind’ as Babaji often teaches. Like being lost in the woods, we spend lots of energy trying to find out way out, only to find ourselves back at the same place we started hours ago. I quit my job because I didn’t like my boss, and my new boss is exactly the same, etc. To free ourselves from the tangled fence of the mind we must navigate our lives from a deeper place than the ‘lefts and rights’, ie. ‘Rights and wrongs’, of the mind, which got us lost in the first place. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches, "During the day, when we find ourselves getting too caught up in something, we take can take a breath into our hearts, and we can ask to surrender all the spinning in our brains. We find the heart chakra and the navel chakra, and then as we exhale, we genuinely surrender the tension of the moment”.
In our analogy of being lost in the woods, it can feel like giving up when we stop trying to ‘find our way out’, but as so many sources remind us, this is far from giving up, its actually how you start to ‘be found’. Similarly the essence of Surrender in the Shambhavananda Tradition doesn’t mean giving up, nor does it mean becoming passive or weak. Surrender is the conscious release of inner anxiety and tension to rediscover the present moment and see our circumstances clearly. Surrender is acknowledging that the path we think will lead us out might actually take us deeper in.
Finding the Compass of the Heart through Surrender
Surrendering allows us to redirect our focus from the external to the internal, from the head to the heart. This simple shift in focus helps us find our inner compass, the heart. This inner compass always points towards our growth, even if there appears to be a brick wall in front of you, or a vast ocean, and when we follow our growth we find our way to freedom. As Sri Shambhavananda remarked on his Guru’s teaching, “Rudi was an amazing siddha. He gave us the key to survival in this crazy world that we live in. Rudi said life is for growing spiritually.”
And similar to finding our way out of the woods, we have to keep checking in with this compass as we walk, over and over again. Because all too often we are lead not by our heart but by our ‘samskaras’, the patterns of our likes and dislikes. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches: “You think that something is going to make you happy, or something is going to be this or going to be that. Your mind is simply dragging you through one thing or another.” Being led by our thoughts leads us in circles, because our thoughts are based on patterns, not on growth. These circles become ever tightening, as the Sutras described it earlier, like being caught in a fence, and fighting against it only seems to make it worse. Or as the study showed that efforts to ‘find our way out of the woods’ only tend to get us more lost, and more tired along the way. It may not be the answer our minds want, but surrender is the option that the Yogic Tradition has give us to find our way to freedom.
Surrender is more like a compass than a map. As Babaji often reminds us in satsang, each of us lives in our own unique reality. There is no ‘map’ that can guide us out of our patterns, there is only the compass of the heart, which we utilize through surrender. And whether we realize it or not, every step we take is guided by this compass. As Swami Muktananda once taught, ‘from the minute we wake up in the morning, to the minute we feel asleep at night, most of us, most of the time, are simply pursuing our likes and avoiding our dislikes’. But a seeker may ask, what else is there? That is a legitimate question that takes a real practice to answer. Babaji frequently teaches that “A yogi neither accepts nor rejects,” which is to say that there is a third possibility in this world, something beyond simply our likes and dislikes. Babaji often follows this teaching with the question: “Who can imagine such a state?”, highlighting that using your energy to work towards something other than your likes and dislikes is a rare state.
Attachments and Aversions Run Deep
This is because our likes and dislikes run deep. According to Patanjali, every one of them has a experiential root in your psyche, because “The seed of attachment is pleasure, and the seed of aversion is pain” (2.7,2.8) Every pleasurable or painful moment we experience leaves an imprint within us, shaping our perception of reality. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches: “We all have things happen to us that we attach to and that we allow to define us. Those things become the basis upon which we live our lives. Some of the events are painful. Some of them are pleasant. This is the dualistic nature of samsara. We are dragged from one extreme to another because of our attachments.” So when a thought pops up in meditation, its not just any thought, its your thought, meaning it has roots into pleasurable or painful experiences in your psyche. This is why Patanjali goes on to teach that, “The enlightened practitioner realizes that the endless cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure is a self-propagating result of our past impressions. [Therefore] Both pain and pleasure must be subjected to the process of introspection and detachment” (2.15).
Introspection and detachment beautifully encapsulate the essence of surrender. Surrender requires that we turn inside and detach from our attachment or aversion in any given moment. Sri Shambhavananda reminds us often that this process of turning inside and releasing our attachments and aversions doesn’t make us a zombie or a doormat as the mind would assume. According to the study from earlier, it was the running in circles through the woods that actually made you the most vulnerable and exhausted. Stopping running in circles actually empowers you. As Swami Rudrananda teaches, “There is great resistance to surrendering; prejudice, fear, and all the old wives' tales enter into play. Actually, it is totally without danger; surrender will do no damage…Only by fear and thinking is a man closed. Consciousness opens all doors….The word "surrender" as it is used in relation to spiritual development does not have the negative connotation it often has in ordinary speech. The act of surrender, as the term is used in this book, is the voluntary casting off of the thoughts and emotions that interfere with the realization of the spirit within” As we see here, Rudi reminds us that a big part of the work of surrender is opening up to the it, as the mind can often delude us and spin us into fearing what we might lose. There is nothing lost in the spiritual act of surrender— there is only growth gained.
The Practice of Surrender
Sri Shambhavananda describes the practice of surrender simply as making a choice in how to use our energy. The focal point is the heart, and all that is required is simply to ‘surrender’ the thoughts that arise that keep us from that focal point. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches: “Every time you sit down and try to quiet the mind, or discipline the body, you have to make a choice. You always have to make a decision about how you are going to use your energy…How do you do that? Students are always asking, ‘Well, how do you surrender, Baba? How do you surrender this stuff?’ It is fairly simple. You sit, take a breath, and feel your heart. When something floats into your mind, if you grab it, it will take your peace and quiet away. The next thing you know you’re back into your thoughts. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ ‘Oh, I’d like to have an omelet.’ When that happens, you take a breath, you draw all of your attention into the heart chakra, and you don’t accept or reject these thoughts. You don’t judge, ‘That’s bad, that’s good, I want it, I don’t want it.’ Instead, you keep yourself focused on your chakras, on the internal and not the external. When you become clear and centered on your point of focus, the mind’s interruptions will simply drop away. This is how you surrender.”
So we see that surrender is a very straightforward and practical practice, though it has cosmic potential. The focal point is simple, the heart, and the thoughts that float up to distract us from that focal point are what we ‘surrender’. Of course we don’t recognize thoughts for what they are till we are usually way down the road with them, and that’s ok, we surrender our judgment of our practice as well. We surrender the need to ‘judge’ our practice, as Babaji notes, because those judgments are just more thoughts in disguise.
Surrender is Not of the Mind
Surrendering thoughts, and our judgments of our practice, point us towards a big realization— surrender is not an act of the mind. Through surrender we are tapping into something much more profound, much deeper in our being. This depth is what makes surrender so powerful, as well as what makes it challenging to describe, teach, and practice. As Swami Rudrananda taught, “These forces are not from us, they are not from parts of our brain.I love (sarcastically) when people think that they have grown far enough to think that they’re doing it, that one part of them is doing it to something else on themselves…It’s completely the attraction of higher energy and forces… It was tremendously shocking to see this thing take place.” For Rudi to say its shocking means it must be pretty shocking. The shock is seeing that we aren’t who we think we are, that we can operate from a space beyond our mind. Surrender is what gives us a glimpse of this.
Though we read about surrender right now on this page, or in the ancient pages of the yogic tradition, understanding surrender will not come from our mind. Swami Rudrananda describes the mind as simply a key that unlocks the door— the mind is not the content we seek. The mind can begin the process for us, and the mind can be used to reinstate our practice, but the mind itself must be held in check as we practice. As Swami Rudrananda teaches, “You surrender within the chest area and spread the force across the chest. The mind is the greatest danger—it must be continually surrendered to allow the force to spread. You must do the double work of opening within and using the mind to keep from narrowing the open area and stopping the process. The student will often find that the entire work process has taken place in his mind. He thinks it through and, in reality, has experienced nothing. To work rightly, one must constantly deepen one’s surrender. It is not enough to maintain the point you have reached; you must constantly reach deeper, or the process is voided. Work must go deeper and transcend tensions; anything else is imagination. One must fight continuously against the life mechanism that insists one has done enough. This is not a work of logic. It is a work of work. Doing and results count—not emotions or thoughts of work.”
Reflecting on the Qualities of Surrender
Surrender is both the recognition that we are running in circles—chasing our thoughts—and the ability to release those thoughts, allowing us to stop and become present. In meditation, this means repeatedly letting go of distractions to refocus on our hearts and the present moment. Surrender is not just an act of release; it is also an expansive experience. It involves opening our hearts and creating space within.
Returning to the earlier analogy, surrender might mean looking around to find shelter, water, or food—broadening one’s awareness to encompass a wider perspective. This expansion is vital because it shifts our focus from the immediate and limited to something greater and more inclusive. Importantly, the process of recognizing our thoughts, letting them go, and expanding our inner space is not something the mind can accomplish on its own. Surrender taps into a deeper, cosmic origin within us.
While surrender requires effort and dedication, we are not the ultimate source of surrender. This brings us to a profound aspect of the practice: the ability to ask for help to surrender. Recognizing that we cannot do it alone opens the door to something greater than ourselves, allowing us to truly grow.
Asking for Help to Surrender
In many of Rudi’s teachings he implores us to ‘ask for help to surrender’. ‘Asking for help’ has much the same colloquial challenges as the word surrender— for some it may imply a weakness or a sense of giving up. Yet in much the same way as surrender, the reality is that ‘asking for help’ is actually empowering and a great aid in the process of opening up from the inside out. It gets us out of our heads, away from the ego’s grasp, and into a space of genuine humility. This kind of asking is different from, say, asking for a refill at a restaurant. It’s more like asking for a miracle. As Rudi famously said, “Expect miracles only.”
There is a saying here in Hawaii about asking for help that I was told by park ranger. We had hiked out to see the lava flow and dusk had settled. As we watched the lava moving down the mountain and past us in to the water, we saw a park ranger emerge from the darkness. He had been documenting the lava flow for the Park when he found himself surrounded by lava on all sides. This can happen to anyone, as the lava is often flowing underground in twisting tubes— so when you are looking at a lava flow in front of you, you might be surprised to turn around and see a glowing light in the cracks of the earth behind you. And this is what had happened to him just moments before. His told me in a very quiet and simple way, “When that happens, you just ask Pele (the goddess of the island) for help, and she will show you the way out.” That was all he said, but I could see in his eyes the sincerity and humbleness of someone who had lived the lesson. Moments earlier, he had asked Pele for help and received it.
There is something so powerful about true surrender, it puts you in touch with a cosmic force that is so much mightier than our limited sense of reality. Running into him then filled me with a sense of this power of surrender. This ‘asking for help’ is something we rarely do unless we’re forced to. Yet, in reality, we could ask for help sincerely every day—not out of desperation, but as a way to grow—and we might be surprised by how often we’d receive it. We might not be surrounded by lava or lost in the woods, but there are countless moments in our daily lives when we could stop, take a breath, and ask for help to feel our hearts and the present moment in order to grow.
As Sri Shambhavananda teaches, “When you first start [to surrender], your mind may go crazy. It will throw many things at you, and it will shout at you. Your job is not to do battle. Instead stay surrendered and focus on what you are doing.You can strengthen yourself all during your day. When you are driving, don’t be thinking about things that are what you want to do, how this is, or how that is. You should practice being present with driving, washing dishes, cooking, or teaching yoga. Being present will strengthen you, so that you can surrender these deep, deep patterns of thought that we all have”. Or as Patanjali put it, “The impressions enumerated above [samskaras] are subtle, and may be erased by transcending them as they occur.”(2.10) However you look at it, we can ask for help to surrender in small ways throughout our day as a way of accessing the compass of the heart and dropping our tensions. We don’t have to wait till we are lost to ask for help, we can ask for help every time we sit to meditate as a means of accessing this profound spiritual power.
A Surrender Practice with Rudi
We can conclude our exploration of the topic of surrender with not just a quote from Rudi, but a guided teaching on the practice of surrender. Here, Rudi provides a simple yet profound method for surrender through asking. Take a moment to read it quietly to yourself, and then try it. Let it land wherever it does for you. Let this meditation guide you into an intuitive understanding of surrender and allow yourself to release all the thoughts and analogies of this essay. As Rudi says, “The revelations of how to work come from inside, not from the intellect…Everyone has this mechanism at his disposal; anyone who does not use it is like a person dying of thirst by the side of a river.” So take a moment now to let go of the mind that runs us in circles, and settle down to find yourself in this forest of samsara. There may be a beautiful river flowing right in front of us, but to find it and take a drink we first have to surrender.
“Sit alone and in comfortable clothes. Try to be freshly bathed. Feel within yourself, trying to get a sense of your insides. Do not ever work from your head. The head is for the dimensions of the earth. Expect miracles only. Try to find a place in your chest to put another you. Ask from the depth of yourself for help to surrender. Ask several times and each time try to increase your sense of nothingness. Realize that you are asking for help and that it is never given when ego is involved. ‘I now ask from my inner depth: Please help me surrender so I may receive the gift of higher consciousness. I am nothing, and you are everything. Please help me.’”