How to Calibrate Your Inner Compass
Re-Calibrate Your Internal Compass with Surrender
by Acharya Satyam
Don’t you love the way a compass moves? How it floats so freely and effortlessly? The floating and subtle movement of a compass needle is part of why we trust it— we can see that it’s completely detached and un-obstructed by the world that surrounds it. It is completely surrendered and identifies with only one thing, True North.
When we travel through the forest of our life, samsara, we also use a compass: the mind and the senses. But we have to be careful to make sure they are property calibrated, because as Swami Muktananda tells us, from the time we wake up to moment we go to sleep our minds are usually pointed towards “pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain”. Accepting and rejecting— the ‘true north’ of samsara. This type of compass only points from one object to the next, leading us in circles. Occasionally, we realize what’s going on— we see the same tree, or the same fork in the river, and exclaim, “I was just here! I quit my job, but my new boss is just like my old boss! My new roommate is just like my old roomate! I bought this new car, but now the AC doesn’t work! I’m right back where I started.”
We blame our experience of life on the objects, but it was really our compass that brought us here. We need to re-calibrate our compass from the “Object North” of samsara, to the ‘True North’ of spiritual growth. Once we’ve done that, the compass of the mind and the senses will actually serve to guide us towards growth. As the Shiva Sutras and Spanda Karika’s tell us:
“For those who are fully aware of God consciousness, all the organs of cognition, organs of action and organs of the intellect lead them to that supreme state of God consciousness. For those who are not aware, these same organs deprive them completely of that God consciousness. (Spanda Kārikā 1.20)”
This means that when the compass of our mind and senses are calibrated towards “God Consciousness” they actually lead us toward God Consciousness. How simple, but how do we do that? Through our practice, and more specifically the practice of Surrender.
Surrender is the practice of consciously releasing our attachments by expanding beyond them in order to grow spiritually. In a ‘yoga journal’ context the term surrender just means to ‘release’ or ‘to let go of’, and this is partially correct, but it misses the work of it— because in order to release, we must also expand.
Think about it— the only way to drop an object in your hand is if you zoom out to see the space around it in which it can be dropped. The only way you can let go of one option is if you see there are other options. It’s like when someone is in a blind rage, and then they snap out of it and look around themselves surprisingly— seeing other people in the room, and the space around them for the first time. Expansion and release, they work together, they need each other, they are each other.
Which is why the mediation guidance for the “Surrender Practice” in Sacred Journey tells us to “take soft breaths into the heart, allowing yourself to expand beyond tension. Keep experiencing greater and greater spaciousness, and then release.” Or how it also says to ‘breathe out and release’ and then to ‘breathe in and expand’. Expansion and release, the building blocks of surrender.
Take the physical breath for example. If you want to take a really deep breath, you actually have to soften and release the body in order that it can expand to take in more air. Go ahead, try to take a deep breath without softening and releasing your ribs and belly, it’s too hard. Now allow the ribs and belly to release while you breathe deeper and you find more expansion. Your body does it all day long on it’s own, just like a compass always points towards North— it’s only when we breathe from our heads that we get it backwards.
Which is why Swami Rudrananda adamantly tells us that you can’t surrender from your head, that the work of surrender is beyond our mind. “These forces are not from us, they are not from parts of our brain,” he says, “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.” (Rudio 3.1, 11:20)
To learn that our minds aren’t the source of surrender is shocking for sure— we believe that our minds are the source of all productivity. The idea that you must consciously go beyond your mind in order to practice surrender is logically beyond comprehension. It’s like trying to use a map to go into uncharted territory. But how do we navigate without the mind’s map? The compass of the heart! And Surrender is how we get this compass to point us in the right direction, the direction of growth. It doesn’t mean stopping, it means moving consciously. The mind will say it’s impossible, because the mind can’t see beyond the horizon, only your compass can.
Swami Rudrananda describes the process of consciously working in this direction of Surrender in his book Spiritual Canabalism. In it he writes,
“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.” (Spiritual Canabalism,pg 53)
I know that Swami Rudrananda’s teachings can be very pronounced, and sometimes more devotional and direct than our culture is accustomed to. He was a realized Siddha, though, and his teachings are the bedrock of ShambhavAnanda Yoga. So if you feel comfortable, then please take a moment and try it now, as Rudi said it— ask from your inner depths for help to surrender in order to receive this gift of higher consciousness.
Asking for help is a powerful path to surrender. ‘Asking’ gets you out of your head, out of your ego. It’s different than ‘asking for a refill’ at a restaurant, it’s more like ‘asking for a miracle’ from God. And just like we would if we were asking for a miracle from God, we would ask and ask and ask. You can probably recall a time in your life when you really asked God for help, and I bet you didn’t just ask once or twice, you probably asked over and over again. So Rudi wants us to ask like that, except the miracle we are asking for is to experience Surrender.
In Hawaii there is a saying that if you ever find yourself surrounded by molten lava, ask Pele for help and she will always show you a path out of it. This is both literal and metaphorical here on the Big Island because we do in fact have volcanic lava flows and people often go hiking to see them, and it’s not uncommon to find themselves in such a precarious situation. I was told this pearl of wisdom by a Volcano National Park Ranger who had just hours earlier found himself in such a predicament. ’You just ask Pele,” he said simply, “and she will show you the way out.” I remember how genuine and internalized he was when he told me this, because he had just asked for this help himself moments before, and received it.
As Yogis, we are the trusted rangers who skillfully navigate Samsara National Park every day. We work hard to keep our compass calibrated towards growth through the practice of Surrender. When we find ourselves going in cirlces, or surrounded by the fiery lava of the mind, we stop, take a breath and ask deeply for help to surrender in order to recalibrate. At first, this might happen when we see the same bend in the river for the third or fourth time, but eventually we begin to use the practice step for step, and that’s when the forest really opens up.
Bring it to the Cushion with Guided Meditation
Surrender and the Breath
Surrender Meditation is generally associated with the heart, as it is taught in Sacred Journey, but it can also be approached through practices like pranayama and breath meditation. In this guided audio meditation I talk a little bit about experiencing surrender in our breathing practices, and use it as a natural segway to a Ham Sah breath meditation.
Bring it Into Your Life with a Lila Sankalpa, a promise to Play!
Lila Sankalpa: The 10 Directions
It is traditional when performing a puja (an ceremony of offerings to a deity or guru) to take a moment to “establish your seat” in order to truly arrive in the space and go deeply within. It is usually done by snapping one’s fingers in each of the 10 directions while repeating a mantra with each snap (The order of the 10 directions: N,S,E,W…NE, SW, NW, SE…Upwards, Downwards). This simple practice can help you throughout the day to re-calibrate your internal compass. There are many layers, or levels, to this game.
Level One: While walking through the forest of samsara (your life), stop and orient yourself towards the North (a phone app can help), and snap in each of the ten directions while repeating your mantra. Once complete, take a deep breath, and proceed with your life. If snapping would be odd in that moment, then just stop and repeat a mantra quietly while holding your focus in each of the ten directions. If you don’t know which way is north, then just consider ‘forwards’ to be north (you’ll still cover them, just in a different order).
Level Two: Do 10 mantras in each of the 10 directions (If not facing North then consider ‘forwards’ to be North). Hold your focus in the first direction and repeat 10 mantras, after which you can say out loud “North!”. Then shift your focus in the next direction and repeat ten more mantras, after which you say “South!”, and so on. Holding your focus in one direction for 10 mantras will help keep you focused, as will saying the direction out loud when finished. If you get distracted and can’t remember which direction you were on, then you gotta start over, but if you get distracted and remember “I was on the North East”, then you just start from there.
Level Three: Do an entire mala in each direction. This level takes a portion of your day to complete, 1,000 mantras, and yields Blissful results. Here you would repeat an entire mala while holding your focus North, or forwards. Because you are doing this in the forest of your life, you probably won’t have the luxury of a physical mala to help you count to 108, so you will need to use some tricks to help you get there. I do it by establishing a cadence in my mantra that gets me through 10 repetitions. There is the traditional cadence of 4 at one tone, then alternating up and down tones for the remaining 6, but that’s just one way! I have found that counting in groups of 5 is super helpful. One 5 rep cadence that works well is: High tone, low tone, high tone, low tone, low tone. Try it!
So that gets you to 10 reps, and then you just say “one” to yourself, and do 10 more, and then say “two” to yourself and so on. Even when life distracts you you will probably remember the number you said out loud last. When you get to 108, you say “North is done!”. And then start over until “South is done!”, and so on.
There is no doubt that this is a more challenging level, but from my experience I couldn’t believe how motivating it was to get to the end, and the end came faster than I thought. When I got there, I felt amazed at how much mantra I had done, and how helpful the directional aspect was for me to stay motivated and focused. It just felt so good to stay so present for so long.
Good Luck, Enjoy! It’s really worth it!