Surrender

On the spiritual path, surrender is the most wonderful thing that can happen. It is a state when one learns to trust God or the infinite power of being to take care of everything, from the mundane to the meaningful. It is surprising, but for most people for a very long time, this trust doesn’t come easily as the ego keeps obstructing the natural process. It is like beating one’s hands & legs while in free fall – there is nothing really to do but to just be & relax, yet it is incredibly hard since one is hurtling down at tremendous speed & seemingly there is chaos & destruction which requires one’s constant action & attention. After a while though, one knows that once the fall has started (fall used not to convey a downward or negative trend), implying once the prarabdha karma that constitutes one’s life has been set into motion, it takes care of itself. Most people choose to strive with their mind rather than sit back & enjoy the movie. 

However, once there is complete surrender, then thoughts no longer lead one into multiple directions. There is pure, choiceless awareness at every moment. To be choiceless is freedom itself – freedom from having to make choices which present themselves to the normal ego ruled person at every instant of time. Making choices dictated by the mind is always tricky, as the mind never knows the full picture & can never tell what the best choice is. One standing 6 feet tall can never really see the whole road & all the routes to know what lies far ahead & decide now which route to take. However one on a tall building, or more appropriately, on a moving helicopter, knows exactly which road to take – which keeps changing constantly. This is the state of pure being which where everything happens spontaneously & only the right thing happens – rather, one may say there is just 1 path & no right or wrong path.

Practically, how does this work & how is this restful state brought upon? There are numerous well known paths to liberation, so there is no need to get into those. The most direct path is that of self enquiry. Whenever thoughts trouble oneself, it is enough to watch them & enquire ‘to whom do these thoughts arise’. The answer obviously is ‘to me, to I’. Then one further enquires ‘who am I’ or ‘who is this I’. One doesn’t answer this question in any way – though it may appear to some that I is the body or mind or brahman/being in a theoretical sense. So every chain of thought is led to this question & then there is silence. After a while the silence remains of itself without explicit need for the self enquiry. This restful state feels much like deep sleep, except that the body is fully functioning and aware of the waking world. The body does what it is supposed to, at exactly the time that it is supposed to. As a very simple & routine example, say one needs to go & get water from the cooler in office. Now this is not something that normally needs to be planned as it is straight forward. But while in the pure state of being, this simple activity is so perfectly timed, that the exact person one needs to meet also appears there, with the exact conversation that needs to happen taking place. It is almost as if the whole of life is running according to a very detailed script which auto adjusts & takes care of everything!

So, is this state worth attaining or does it appear boring? It is not dullness, like the sort that one feels after lack of sleep or a very heavy meal, but it is highly vibrant & full of life. It is deeply peaceful, so that one can instantly close one’s eyes & lose track of the whole waking world, yet instantly wake up again the waking world, as needed, without the least bit of drowsiness. If everything happens in the best possible way, then what else is desired? There is nothing more to strive for. Once this state becomes continuous or permanent, it is called liberation. It is liberation from constant mental effort & striving to move towards desirable events/places/people/outcomes & away from undesirable ones. It is when one becomes a living embodiment of the truth, when all that is said in the scriptures about the final state occur effortless, always. The state itself is important to be held onto & the events that happen later are of no consequence, since it is already established that they will be perfectly in order.