The Experience of Surrender: A Closer look at Shiva Sutra 3.3

Here’s the challenge: The knower, our awareness, and the thing we are getting to know, the object of our awareness, are not two different things. 

They are the same thing- together the ‘object of your awareness’ and ‘your awareness’ compose one singular experience, your experience of life. When life isn’t going like we want it, and we want to have a different experience of it, we usually start by changing the objects of our awareness, weed whacking our life and starting fresh— but as we all realize, those weeds have roots below the surface, and it’s only a matter of time before that same weed is gonna grow back, it might look a little different but it’s the same weed. 

This flawed perspective of reality yields ineffective methods of change. The yogic tradition tells us that the objects of reality and our own internal awareness are not two SEPARATE things, and they are not even two parts of the ONE thing— they are literally both aspects of the same thing. Just like the roots of a tree and the tree above ground are both the singular expression of the one tree. 

“in knowledge you will find the residence of the knower and in the knower you will find the residence of knowledge. These are not two different aspects of being, they are one aspect of being. Knowledge and the knower (ātmā) are, in the real sense, one. (Vijñānabhairava 137)”

One aspect of being, the roots and the trunk are both the one tree— your experience of reality.  

So we should be focusing our attention not on the objects of reality, but on our experience of it. The experience you are having at any moment in your day is the place to focus your practice. This space is not defined by right and wrong, accepting and rejecting, but is based on a living experience of surrender.

A good yogi, however, neither accepts nor rejects. If you can imagine living without accepting or rejecting, you will begin to understand the concept of surrender. To be able to surrender you are required to dissolve the mental constructs that you have created.

Surrender works below the level of objects, it is concerned with the constructors of objects, as Babaji said. To encounter the experience of surrender we have to feel more deeply than the surface of the object. Surrender always occurs within the realm of experience, and Rudi tells us that it is essentially very simple: 

“And it's a simple thing of just taking a breath and really feeling the energy going down and rising above anything which has caught us, and it's the simplest thing in the world that doesn't require any intelligence.”

So why do we find it so challenging? Because as Lakshmanjoo states,  “we think that we are one with our body and God is not,” so instead of bringing our practice into the elements of our life, we keep it separate. We brush our teeth, we spit out the water, and we end up living at that level, slowly descending. 

“When you know these elements as differentiated and not as undifferentiated, thinking they are different from your own nature and not one with it, then you have descended.” 

But each of those moments could become parts of your ascending. As Rudi says, we can take a breath while brushing our teeth, and when washing our mouth after, we can wash it a little deeper, and when we spit, spit out poisons that hold us back from growth.

And we can do this! We have everything we need, all that’s left is doing it. Make it fun, make it real, play! However you can keep yourself interacting with your experience consciously will help.  LMJ summarizes from the Spanda Karika, “Those who are deprived of awareness are pushed down into the field of ignorance. Those who possess the fullness of awareness, however, become completely elevated.”

Let’s hear rudi talk about

"And you really get caught up in the tensions of the day you get caught up in the emotions of the day and you completely forget that a spiritual life is a higher and finer thing. And we have to continually make those judgments in ourselves, we have to continue to work. And it's a simple thing of just taking a breath and really feeling the energy going down and rising above anything which has caught us, and it's the simplest thing in the world that doesn't require any intelligence, but to see people who have intelligence, who have capacity, lose their direction every single day is nothing short of appalling. 

And this goes on and on and on, when you tell a human being, and you speak to them and they make a dedication and they can't even brush their teeth in the morning, and remember that they can take a breath while they're brushing their teeth, they can wash their mouth, and really wash it a little deeper, because they're really getting rid of poisons, they can take a shower, they can move their bowels— all of these things when you have just the thought, that it isn't just your physical function, but you're trying to cleanse yourself, so that you become a vessel in which a higher force can flow. And it allows you to consciously, and only consciously, can you get into these deep poisons which really hold to your body which hold your mind and stop you emotionally and physically and every other way from functioning. And it's getting caught up in the emotion, getting caught up in the ideas, and all these thoughts that you think are so brilliant, and meanwhile, we haven't really flushed the toilet, in our psyche and our heart and our soul. 

And we live with this filth, day by day, we live with this glut day by day, and we become ground by it, and become lowered by and become stinking in it and become oppressive to the people who we love. Because we can't make a very simple, conscious effort. And there is nothing in the world that justifies that. I mean, there are times when you can go through a crisis, but you certainly have to go through the crisis working (breathes deeply) in a state of surrender, then  if you're tortured and these things are going on and you can't get rid of, fine, it’s understandable. At least you're not here but you're on a higher level, and as you burn and as you're worn through, as you're washed through, then at least these lesser things can fall away from you.”