Primary Essay: The Heart of Surrender
The Heart of Surrender
Essays on Working with the Heart and the Yogic Practice of Surrender and the
“The Heart is the Hub of all Holy Places, Go there and Roam in it.”
— Bhagavan Nityanananda, Root Guru of Shambhavananda Tradition.
The heart is a hub because so many experiences take us there— an amazing hike, a beautiful sunset, a baby being born, or simply a delicious meal — but what we don’t realize is that the joy we are experiencing in every face/place/taste is actually bubbling up from within, not from without. And even more importantly, the Yogic tradition teaches us how to practice finding this source of joy consciously — we don’t have to wait for the world to bring us a tasty dish, or a beautiful sunset to feel happy; we can actually practice opening our heart on a daily basis on and off our cushion. The result is that we get “happier for no reason” as Sri Shambhavananda often tells us, which is to say our heart opens without an external object. This, essentially, is the goal of our practice, and the teaching revealed in this chapter.
In similar fashion to the last set of essays, take your time. Sit with the content, reflect on the quotes presented, let yourself write freely. Try to use these essays as inspiration for your own inner work.
The Practice of Surrender:
Cultivating Inner Peace through Heart Awareness
We all know how important the heart is for us on a physical level, quietly pulsing in the background of all that we do. The yogic heart, too, is the pulse of our reality. As Bhagavan Nityananda taught, the heart is hub, a nexus point of inner and outer realities. And as he also taught, this hub is a familiar place, one that we can “roam in” with ease. Metaphysically, the heart rests in the middle of our chakra system, making it deep enough to store tremendous power, but near enough to the surface of our experience so as to be accessed with relative ease. The heart is also considered the “higher mind”, the seat of intuition and insight. Because of its unique power and accessibility, the heart is truly is a hub of focus for the Shambhavananda tradition— we bring our awareness there as we breath, we feel the vibration there as we repeat mantra, we cultivate devotion there as we chant kirtan, we hold our focus there as we move through yoga asanas, and we re-find our center in the heart as we move through our daily tasks. What we find is that the more attention we can bring to our hearts, the better our lives get, day by day.
As Sri ShambhavAnanda teaches:
“You need to be able to dive into your own heart and find that place of deep, deep nourishment inside. And then you get happy for no reason. Sometimes you think there is a reason, but there is no reason. It is your natural state! Inside, all the time, that happiness exists, just as the sun is up there radiating all the time, whether we see it or we don’t see it, whether it is cloudy, or whether it is night time. In the same way, divine consciousness is inside of us radiating all the time, whether we are depressed or happy, whether we are sick or healthy. If you look for it, you will find it. The purpose of a spiritual practice is to help you find that divine consciousness within.”
As Babaji teaches, our practice revolves around ‘diving into our heart’ no matter what our external environment may look like— good, bad, or mundane. When we do this, we not only find nourishment and relief from our life’s challenges, but we uncover a natural state of happiness that bubbles up from within. But perhaps most important is the final words in this quote— a spiritual practice is the means by which we find this divine consciousness. Because even though our heart is right inside of us, it is covered by the thoughts and tensions of a busy mind, like clouds cover the sun.
These clouds are called “samskaras”, patterns of thoughts and behavior that veil our experience of the heart. A samskara could be an attachment to something you feel like you ‘can’t live without’, or an aversion to something you wish you were living without. Samskaras are basically the distractions of a busy mind, in their infinite forms. It is anything that pulls you away from your heart, and makes you feel limited. We don’t need to be able to name our samskaras in order to let them go— in fact, that usually slows down our progress. It’s important to know that the purpose of all yoga practices, from mantra, to yoga to seva, are literally techniques that dissolve samskaras and naturally bring our attention to the heart, or as Babaji put it, help us ‘re-discover the divine consciousness within’.
Using a yoga practice to let go of the samskaras of a busy mind and re-discover the radiance of the heart is challenging and requires effort over time. The unique effort we use to let go of samskaras is called ‘surrender’. From a colloquial perspective, surrender might mean giving up, or losing. However, from the yogic perspective, surrender means letting go of our inner attachments in order to recognize our true nature. Rather than “I give up,” surrender means “I open up.” It is a conscious, powerful, transformational practice of using your energy and awareness to release your patterns, samskaras, instead of reinforcing them. Paul Reps, dear friend of Sri Shambhavananda and Zen Master, once wrote a famous poem that aptly describes the work and purpose of surrender: "Drinking a bowl of Green Tea, I stop the war.” Here we see that the struggles we experience on a daily basis can often be coming from inner resistance and tension. Surrender is the active releasing of these attachments. This may or may not relate to changing our outer circumstances, the point is that it is something that occurs inside of us that changes our relationship with what’s outside of us. Surrender doesn’t have to mean rejecting, it can mean embracing, such as letting the warmth and delight of a cup of green tea reconnect you with the peace of your heart, allowing you to let go of a tension that might have its grip on you.
As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“When you surrender, you are consciously releasing your attachments, definitions, and illusions…Surrender doesn’t mean, “I give up”, rather, it is voluntarily letting go of your thought patterns. If, when you sit down to meditate, you take a breath and you think, “I have to do this and I have to do that. I don’t know what to do about this or that,” you are not surrendering. Surrendering is taking a breath into the heart chakra, and asking to surrender. As you exhale you relax, and you don’t allow the mind to drag you around. The best way to deal with the mind is not to analyze it, and not to have an in-depth conversation with it, but to release it, to let it go” (SP, 65).
Surrender and the heart are two sides of the same coin— when you surrender, your heart opens. When your heart opens, you are in a state of surrender. The heart is the destination, and surrender is the path. This is because finding our heart never happens in a ‘vacuum’, it happens in your life, so to find our heart we must practice surrender. There are many ways to understand the practice of surrender, and each of them will require you to practice in a different type of environment. On your cushion, surrender is how you bring your attention back to the mantra, over and over again. It is also how you access deeper levels of mantra, going beyond the mind. Off the cushion, surrender is how you start to grow from the variety of actives and experiences of our day.
Free Write:
How would you define the term “Surrender”? When do you ‘dive into your heart’ in daily life? Do you feel this is a good example of surrender?
How do you understand the difference in surrender as “letting go” rather than “giving up”? Can you give an example of this in your daily life? What might this not look like?
How do you relate to the idea of being happy for no reason? Do you think this is a familiar concept for most people (or for you)? Why or Why not?
How do you relate to the idea of surrendering Tension? Do you think this is a familiar concept for most people (or for you)? Why or Why not?
From Mouth to Heart:
Exploring the Depths of Mantra and Surrender
The practice of mantra is one of the clearest ways to use the practice of surrender to find our hearts. Mantra has a power of vibration that dissolves samskaras and opens our hearts referred to as “Matrika Shakti”. When we start to repeat mantra, we might feel it on a very physical level, but as we relax our mind and settle into our seat, we usually find ourselves feeling the mantra at a deeper and deeper level. At first we might only hear the mantra, but over time we begin to ‘feel the mantra’, so to speak. The feeling of mantra is its Matrika Shakti. The yogic tradition teaches that the vibrational power of mantra is present when we feel the mantra in the mouth and hear it as words, but is more powerful when we can feel it in the throat, and even more powerful when we can feel it in our heart. In fact, the vibration and feeling of mantra in the throat is said to be 10,000 times more powerful than the mouth. And the power of mantra in the heart is 10,000 times more powerful than the throat— that’s right, feeling mantra in your heart is considered 100,000,000 times more powerful than mantra simply spoken by the tongue. Wow! So how do we move from the mouth to the throat to the heart as we repeat mantra? That is the practice of surrender— surrender is how we go deeper with our mantra, how we feel the vibration behind the words.
As Swami Muktananda teaches:
“Everyone is aware of the speech of the tongue. It is called Vaikhari and corresponds to the gross body. With the subtle intellect, one can also know the second level of speech, which is in the throat. There, words have taken form but have not yet emerged. This level is called Madhyama and corresponds to the subtle body. At a deeper level, words exist in the heart. This is the third level of speech, Paśyanti, which corresponds to the causal body. Here, words are hidden, and what arises at this level is Matrika… The moment one understands the Matrika Shakti and its work, one is no longer a human being. When the Matrika Shakti expands within, in this very body one becomes Shiva” (Nothing Exists that is Not Shiva, p. 7-9).
It is important to recognize the depth of experience described here— mantra at the level of the heart takes you to an experience that is truly beyond the mind, merging us with our true nature. This experience is often described by ShambhavAnanda as the experience of “the mantra repeating you, instead of you repeating the mantra.” At this level you have merged with the heart of the mantra, and the difference between you and mantra dissolves. This is why Swami Muktananda teaches: “When the mantra, the repeater of the mantra, and the goal of the mantra become one and the same for you, you attain the fruit of the mantra.”
Though this mountain top may seem far away, it is indeed approachable on a daily basis. Anytime we sit to practice mantra, we can walk down these steps to the heart, from the mouth to the throat to the heart, one mantra, or Mala, at a time. For this reason, chanting mantra can be one of the most practical, and powerful, means of finding our hearts, and discovering the practice of surrender. What we find is that as we go towards the heart, the mantra naturally slows down and quiets down. The external form dissolves as the internal experience rises up.
Free Write
Let yourself explore the practice of mantra as a means of using surrender to walk your awareness towards your heart. Can you feel these three distinct zones of mantra— the mouth, throat, and the heart? And more importantly, can you feel the unique effort of surrender as the means by which you walk inwards towards the heart of the mantra?
Everyday Surrender
The Mundane, the Pleasant, and the Challenging
In the journey of spiritual growth, everyday surrender plays a pivotal role, offering a pathway to transformation through seemingly mundane tasks and moments. Part One explores how starting small with surrender can lead to profound shifts, emphasizing the significance of integrating practice into everyday life. From folding laundry to commuting, each moment presents an opportunity for inner cultivation. Part Two delves into the practice of surrender amidst life's pleasures, challenging the notion of happiness derived solely from external sources. By redirecting awareness to the source of joy within, practitioners can deepen their experience and share that joy with others. Lastly, Part Three examines surrender as a means of transforming tension into spiritual fuel, illustrating how letting go of attachments and limitations propels practitioners toward growth. Through the metaphor of surrender as releasing an anchor, the article highlights the profound relief and spiritual ascent that arise from relinquishing deeply held patterns. Each part underscores the importance of commitment to the practice of surrender, inviting readers to explore its transformative power in their own lives.
Everyday Surrender Part One
From Mundane to Meaningful: Elevating Everyday Tasks through Surrender
If you were to start studying physics, you probably wouldn’t begin with E=MC squared. In the same way, as you start to study the physics of spiritual growth, its best to start small. For that reason, the best place to begin using the practice of surrender to find your heart in your day isn’t while speaking with your boss in a quarterly report, but on the commute to work. It’s not in the throes of a disagreement with a loved one, but in the quiet time you might spend with them watching a movie. Eventually we can begin to apply our practice to the bigger challenges of our life, but a skillful practitioner builds up to that over time.
Surrendering an object you like or love is one path in our practice, but perhaps the most abundant experience of surrender comes in the spaces between those highs and lows. The mundane moments of our lives, the repetitive tasks that might seem boring on the surface, offer us abundant opportunities to practice surrender. These simple daily tasks, such as folding laundry, the commute to and from work, walking our dog, doing dishes, watering the plants, mowing the lawn, and so on, offer us a chance to surrender the need to ‘entertain’ or distract ourselves constantly and instead start to train and maintain ourselves energetically. When you choose to do mantra, or to focus on the dish you are cleaning, or both, you are training your mind to stay where you put it, and this is the practice of surrender. As you maintain this level of surrender during your day, your evening meditation practice begins to excel — your mind is quieter and your mechanism is stronger.
It can be helpful to know that science has confirmed that when we can maintain our focus during these more mundane or simpler moments, we actually allow our focus to refresh so that we can be more aware when the activities of our day present themself. In short, when we use the space between our activities skillfully to stay present, then we can be more present during our more demanding activities.
This, of course, has been a staple of the yogic tradition for millenia. Yoga Sutra 2.40 and 2.41 teaches that the first practice of self reflection can begin by simply being present while you perform “bodily maintenance,” something that every human being has had to do since the beginning of time.
As Patanjali teaches:
“By consciously keeping one’s own body clean and performing bodily maintenance, one gains an understanding of the temporary and unglamorous nature of the physical body. Additionally, by promoting cleanliness of mind through focus and not allowing the mind to wander, the mind becomes pleasing and the body and the senses may be brought under control. This is how one gains knowledge of the Self.”
Yogis have long utilized their practice during life's mundane moments as a pathway to spiritual growth. By incorporating even a small amount of practice into these often disregarded aspects of your day, the benefits begin to compound. Opportunities abound in various moments, offering countless ways to engage in your practice. Ultimately, the key lies in your commitment to embracing these seemingly unconscious periods and opening the door to your practice.
Free Write
Are there any repetitive tasks in your life in which you could see yourself successfully implementing your practice? (One technical tip: If you play the Mantranōm from your phone, it will play in the background of your apps showing you that it is indeed possible to surf the web or scroll social media while remaining present with your mantra. It will also play in your pocket when the phone screen is off, which offers you even more opportunities to grow.)
Everyday Surrender Part Two
Bridging our Practice up to the Pleasant.
”The truth is that the joy you find in all things is simply a reflection of the joy of your own Inner Self”
- Swami Muktananda
Interestingly enough, this might be the most challenging practice of surrender. Not because its the most difficult to do, but because its the most difficult to try. Life is tough, and when things are going well it can be hard to do anything but coast with it. The purpose of this section isn’t to keep you from enjoying the good times, but to give you the tools you need to actually absorb the energy those good times are bringing you. Because a sun set is amazing, but eventually it sets. The hug of best friend is like nectar, but eventually they go home. The bite of peach is perfection, but eventually you reach the pit. Applying the practice of surrender when you are enjoying life doesn’t mean we stop participating in what we’re enjoying, but rather, we redirect our awareness from the object to the source of its happiness, our own hearts. As Sri ShambhavAnanda teaches:
“In the Vijnanabhairava, a Kashmir Shaivism book of practices, it is said that in a moment of great joy and great happiness we should go directly to the source of that happiness. Many people think they are happy because of some external event or object. Actually, the source of our happiness always comes from inside. A beautiful sunset might make you feel extraordinary, but the sunset was not the source of your happiness. The next day’s sunset may not impact you the way yesterday’s sunset did. What happened was that the experience of the first sunset opened something up inside you where the source of true happiness resides. If you can find the happiness in yourself, you will be able to share it with everybody. The people who are a part of your life will all benefit from being around a person who has found some inner peace and some inner joy” (SP, 72).
As Babaji teaches, there is no doubt that life opens our hearts on a daily basis. We are not here to reject that, but rather to absorb it more deeply. The sunset has opened the door of our heart, but when the sun sets the door to hearts shuts with it. We’ve all gone to a movie and been transported, only to feel the weight of life on our shoulders the moment we walk back out into the light. So what do we do? We practice walking into our hearts when that door opens. What does that look like? Patanjali teaches in Yoga Sutra 1.15, “In becoming the master of one’s own intellect, one can encounter an object of enjoyment without attachment, and be content.” That’s like saying you get your cake and eat it too! And it really is possible through surrender, a practice that will not only extend the enjoyment of those experiences, but more importantly, create pathways of awareness to the heart that allow that bliss to flow into our lives all the time— not just during ‘happy hour’. Does it mean closing your eyes during a sun set, maybe, maybe not. It just means that we expand our awareness and try to allow our awareness to soften. We breathe softly into our heart while we continue to enjoy the sun set. This is how we not only absorb the real joy of a sun set, but actually share that joy with those around us.
To put this teaching into perspective Babaji often describes what he calls ‘the ice cream sundae test’— if the joy we feel in eating an ice cream sundae is in the ice cream itself, then why don’t three sundaes make us feel three times better? This is because the joy of the ice cream is actually inside of us, and the first one simply opened our hearts and let us feel that. If we can breathe into our hearts while we feel that joy, we can go deeper into the joy of our everyday life. If we miss the chance, though, and just reach for another sundae, we might find that joy eludes us. In this way the yogi can have their ice cream and joy too, if they are willing to pay attention to the source of that joy in the moment they experience it.
As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“One of the things that I loved about Rudi (Swami Rudrananda) is that he was just who he was. When you went out for ice cream with him, you knew something extraordinary was happening, but it was also ordinary. The ordinary concealed the extraordinary — if you weren’t paying attention. In the same way, if you are caught up in a lot of illusions it’s hard to pay attention to the Inner Self” (SP, 24).
Free Write
Take time to reflect on this practice in action, surrendering your favorite face/place/taste in the moment of enjoyment, just for a moment, in order to ask yourself, “Where is this happiness coming from?”
Everyday Surrender Part Three
Transforming Tension into Spiritual Fuel
When something isn’t going our way, our natural instinct is to ‘fix’ it, that is, to change our external circumstances in order to uplift our internal experience. This, we are taught by the yogic tradition, usually just ensures us more. What if, instead, there existed a third option—one that uplifts us by delving within, harnessing the transformative power of meditation and inner discipline? This concept of surrender, as Babaji explains, involves releasing our deeply ingrained tensions and limitations, akin to shedding an anchor that binds us to the depths, thus propelling us toward spiritual ascent through the transformative power of inner purification. As we embrace the practice of surrender, we discover that letting go becomes a means for us to soar to new heights, both in our lives and in our spiritual practice.
As Muktananda writes, ‘from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, we spend our days pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.’ But to the yogi, ‘pursuing pleasure’ leads to attachment— the idea that we can’t be happy without a certain object or experience, blinding us to the Bliss in our hearts. And ‘avoiding pain’ tends to lead to aversion, the idea that something external could ‘take away’ our bliss, causing us endless anxiety. (Yoga Sutra 2.7, “The seed of attachment is pleasure”. Yoga Sutra 2.8, “The seed of Aversion is Pain.”) The Sutras summarize this in saying that, ‘A Yogi neither accepts, nor rejects’— that is, to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls, the Sutras recommend that a yogi neither pursues pleasure nor avoids pain. But what else is there?
In his book, Spiritual Practice, Shambhavanda tells us about a third option,
“What students normally do is… try to change things externally so they don’t feel bad. It is much better to learn how to work inside and to get free of the need to react. Manipulating the world outside of you doesn’t solve anything. What does resolve your difficulties is that you can change your state of being through an inner practice and meditative discipline.”
Essentially the practice of meditation will teach us this third option to ‘fixing’ our life. As Babaji tells us, this third option is ‘learning to work inside’ in order to ‘change our state of being’, instead of spending our energy trying to avoid the challenges, or distract ourselves from it. This ‘internal work’ is the foundation of yoga, and is the experience being described by the term ‘Surrender.’
To most people, the word ‘Surrender’ denotes ‘failure’, like waving a white flag to indicate that you ‘give up’. But from the yogic perspective, what we are ‘giving up’ when we surrender is our own tension, our own limitations. And this ‘letting go’ is actually incredibly challenging, and takes alot of practice— it’s not as easy as just waving a handkerchief. Because what we are letting go of, or giving up if you will, are deeply held attachments and aversions— the things we were talking about earlier.
“It is as though you are holding onto a big anchor at the bottom of the ocean. All you need to do is let go, and you will rise to the top. But we like our anchor, and we are very attached to it. We have put time and energy into creating our persona, identity, and limitations, which are the building blocks of our anchor. Our life has become a process of building and hanging on to this anchor. Spiritual growth has to do with the total annihilation of that process. On the one hand, it seems silly that we would not let go of that anchor; but on the other hand, to let go of it is the most terrifying thing in the world. That is the nature of surrender. It has to do with opening up to your limitations and simply releasing them. Your greatest limitation is your definition of life and your experiences” (SR, 32).
As Babaji teaches, the act of surrendering in itself is nothing more than “letting go,” yet this simple action takes tremendous commitment and inner strength. This is because what we are letting go of is nothing less than our perspective of reality, a way we have of seeing the world that is literally causing us pain. And even though we can feel the pain, it is still challenging to let it go. But what happens when we let it go? In the analogy from Babaji, we rise up and find tremendous relief. This is essentially the uplifting quality of spiritual growth at the heart of the yogic tradition. We rise up by simply letting go, which might seem counter intuitive to the mind, but within this underwater analogy makes perfect sense.
The realization that the challenges of our life are actually fuel for growth transforms our practice. When we begin to use our everyday circumstances to open our hearts and grow, our practice truly begins to ‘blast off’. We cultivate surrender across a myriad of circumstances and soon find our practice soaring to new heights. Sri Shambhavananda often refers to this work as a Saturn 5 Rocket. Although it can sound intimidating or overwhelming to use our lives as fuel for growth, the minute you begin to do so is the minute the concept will begin to clarify and take shape. This energy released is what fuels our spiritual growth, and the true aspirant is simply one who is committed to this process. The final quote here from Sri Shambhavananda shows us perhaps one of the most fundamental perspectives of growth in the yogic tradition, and one that is aptly applied when surrendering a challenging situation— the heat of growth, the heat of surrender.
“Rudi referred to the challenges of life as fuel--fuel to burn, fuel to heat up this inner purification that takes place when you begin a spiritual practice.” Shambhavananda teaches, “[Rudi] said our tensions create natural resources. We have mountains of fuel inside to use and the way one burns these tensions (this fuel) is through the process of surrender. Surrender means not rejecting, but releasing, our tensions, and this process creates a chemistry… We are able to create such a tremendous flow and heat that we are performing a massive purification… The difficult things in our lives hold the greatest potential because they symbolize a big chunk of locked up energy in our bodies and nervous systems. We don’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds us, but we have to know how to handle it when it shows up.
Free Write: What is your experience of working deeper inside, and igniting this spiritual fire? Try it, and find out for yourself. Feel the inner strength it takes to breathe into an inner knot of tension in the midst of your life. Feel the heat of ‘burning’ up your limitations through your practice, purifying from the inside out, and by doing so ‘floating up’, without necessarily lifting a [physical] finger.
Surrender, Pauseless Effort & The Wish to Grow
100% Non-Artifical Ingredients
The ‘merger’ of the small self into the heart referred to in the last essay is a quality of complete surrender. Patanjali teaches that this occurs naturally when your focus and surrender become “an uninterrupted flow.” So don’t worry so much about how many mantras you do, instead focus on making them flow. This is how you naturally arrive at the heart. This is because repeating mantra continuously takes continuous awareness — your mind can’t drift.
As the Shiva Sutra’s describe it: “Pauseless effort brings about the yogi’s attainment of God consciousness.” Pauseless effort is continuous effort without pause. In the Kenpo brothers book, Tara’s Enlightened Activity, they have a specific way of teaching about the power of continuity when chanting mantra:
“Chant mantra continuously, without a definite beginning and end to each repetition. Chant with a speed that is as quick as possible while allowing you to keep each syllable clearly in mind. Each syllable is equally important. Meditate that the inner sound of your true nature is merging with the voice” (21 Taras, 44).
Continuity isn’t just a matter of effort; it's a matter of surrender. To really be continuous with something you have to be continuously letting go of everything else. That’s why in all of the teachings, the practice of continuity is coupled with the practice of sincerity. As the Kenpo brothers wrote, we must repeat our mantra in such a way that our inner voice merges with our actual voice. We aren’t just saying the mantra, we’re also hearing it. Similarly, later in the same Shiva Sutra referenced above, we are given instruction on the quality of our effort as well:
“Your effort must not be artificial (akṛita). It must be absolutely natural, filled with intense desire and fervent longing, and originating from the center of your heart. By that force, this great yogī directs their mind to that point of supreme God consciousness” (Shiva Sutra Lakshmanjoo translation, 2.2).
In this way we see that surrender, and its destination of the heart, are not physical practices or destinations, but ways of practicing. For example, you can repeat 100,000 mantras, but if you do it with your will and from your head, it might not be as beneficial as 100 mantras from the heart. As Sri Shambhavananda teaches:
“Some students do a practice, and they do it and do it, and then ask, ‘Oh, Baba, why isn’t it working?’ Swami Muktananda used to say that even parrots can repeat mantra, but it’s not going to enlighten them because they’re just going through the motions. If you chant the Guru Gita for fifty years, you’ll probably have a better life. But you will gain much more if you do it consciously, and with great focus” (SP, 54).
We see that our practice is not just a matter of quantity; it’s also a matter quality. Surrender is that quality, and the destination it is bringing us to is our hearts. Over the years, as we deepen our practice, our mantra will always stay the same, but our ability to use it to surrender is what really changes — and that is what determines our growth.
This sincere effort of surrender is the most valuable commodity of the Yogic tradition. Swami Rudrananda described it as the “Wish to Grow” and taught that it was literally the strongest force in the Universe. In the Wish to Grow practice, Swami Rudrananda instructs us to sit in a room and simply say the words, “I deeply wish to grow” out loud, while simultaneously listening to the lack of sincerity in our voices when we say it. Go ahead and try it now, and you’ll hear what he means. If our words truly echoed our hearts, we would actually be saying “I deeply wish to grow, and I also hope I can get a good night’s sleep after this,” or “I deeply wish to grow, and I also also wish they would promote me at work,” and so on. What we find is that our minds are no more focused on our growth than they are on our everyday lives — and that’s ok, that’s where we all start. This is similar to Muktananda’s teaching about repeating mantra at the level of the mouth — it’s just the beginning. So we say it again, “I deeply wish to grow,” except this time we try to say it with a little more sincerity than before. Try saying it ten times right now, and each time try to bring a little more sincerity to it. In this way, we can actually feel the depth of surrender, and work to surrender more and more. You can feel how saying with more sincerity requires more and more surrender inside. Can you feel it? Surrender and sincerity go hand in hand on the path to the heart.
The sincere effort of surrender is so valuable that the Shiva Sutras say it ‘comes from above,’ meaning that it can’t be given to you or taught — it can only be earned through practice itself. Luckily, it is also an intuitive quality that needn’t be taught per se, only awakened. As Nityananda said, “The heart is the hub,” meaning we know this space intimately, all that’s left to learn is how to go there and how to roam in it. That’s why we practice. So don’t feel bad if you can’t define surrender or don’t know exactly what it means when you try to practice — just keep working at it with the rest of us, one face/place/taste at a time, one level of mantra at a time, one pauseless effort at a time, one wish to grow at a time…until you simply arrive at the heart of surrender, and your very being merges into its definition.
Free Write
How do you find sincerity in your practice? Does this take you to the heart? What is your expense Does it require some kind of surrender?