What does it mean to surrender?

A short response to a spiritual seeker.

A friend on a sincere spiritual path, currently at an ashram in India, wrote to me inquiring about surrender.

My greatest desire is surrender. My confusion is that I’m being asked to surrender to something outside myself, something external. And this means fully opening to, without any barriers or armor. But if everything external or outside myself is impermanent, how can I rely on that? My human wisdom tells me that it’s unreliable and will lead to pain. So why would I surrender to a guru or teacher? Also, I happen to like my will! So, what if a teacher tells me do something I don’t want to do? What about my own free will?

Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash

I post my response here for readers drawn to such themes.

Dear One,

Surrender HAPPENS. Surrender is not something that YOU do. Like forgiveness, like letting go, like awakening, like every little occurrence or perceived state under the sun, it HAPPENS.

YOU, as a separate egoic individual, have nothing to do with it. This is a very important point. Without understanding this point, there is only egoic striving, trying to let go, trying to surrender, or resist. The very first point is to understand that there is no separate individual doer.

You mention liking your own free will – sure! Enjoy “your” free will. It arises, like volition, as an appearance in Consciousness. Like a wave upon the ocean. But is never separate from God’s will aka Cosmic Law. Anything can only happen in perfect time, in time out of time – you surrender to someone or something, or there is a release of egoic willfulness. The truth of Who You Are has nothing to do with it. It is not personal. This is the ultimate teaching from Advaita (nonduality).

Now, examining surrender in the relative, the “daily living” of life, in relationship to a teacher or teaching, we can look to some pointers. Pointers are what I call partial truths. They are ultimately false, but they can give us some direction. It is like the Buddhist saying, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. It is utimately false, but relatively helpful.

As a bridge or stepping stone, holding on to the feet of God, or to the feet of the guru, is a form of natural bhakti (divine love) arising. It is the ego throwing itself into the flames, so to speak – self (small self) immolation. The ego-identification commits harikari. It knows the jig is up, it hasn’t a chance. It leaves itself at the mercy of God, whatever Life throws, including what the teacher-guru asks of it. At this point, Who Cares? It has suffered enough and seen through the futility. It accepts that it can’t do anything anyway, so it entrusts the fate of the human to God, or in cases of bhakti with a guru, to this representation of Truth.

Even in the latter situation, there may still arise a separate appearance of free will that arises. The individual (you) might say, hey now, I don’t want to do what that guru-teacher-teaching is asking of me. That’s a no. I’m a no. I’m not into that request. I’m out.

All of that is fine, too. Resistance is fine. The no is fine. The yes is fine. It’s happening exactly as it needs to go down.

You say that you’re confused about surrendering to something external (a person, a thing, a state, a teaching) since any appearance in the world is ephemeral – it is impermanent and therefore ultimately unreliable. Yes! That is true. This is why the point is to surrender to Totality, to Brahman, to All That Is, to THAT which does NOT come and go. Neti neti. It is not this, nor this, nor this. The true surrender is the full apperception, the clear seeing, the absolute realization, that You Are THAT.

There is ultimately Nothing to surrender to, because You Are THAT. The realized body-mind-soul human has realized, understood, and awakened to the Reality that it is never separate from THAT which is occurring. The flow of Life, if you will.

You are Life itself. What to surrender to?

Much love,

Erin