Surrender

Surrender to God or Self has to be total. It has to include all aspects of life. You can surrender to a personal God or a teacher, but eventually it leads to that inherent trust, that inherent innocence, the innocence of a child. A child doesn’t trust just his parents. He trusts everyone until he’s taught not to trust. Don’t take candy from a stranger.

Just take life as it comes. Trust in the benevolence of the universe. Let the Self take care of the Self. Surrender the mind to not knowing. The mind cannot know the Self. Only the Self can know the Self. Surrender the body unto death. The body is impermanent. It cannot know the Self. Surrender the emotions and let them play themselves out until they are totally free. Surrender the ego. There is no separate self. Surrender everything.

In the beginning you trust the teacher, my yoke is easy, but don’t get caught up in their personality, not liking something about their personality, how they dress, they eat turkey, they smoke. Don’t let their personality get in the way of your surrender. In the beginning they are there to point the way, to give darshan, to give a focus to your attention so that you can surrender. First there is faith in the teacher, then a knowing, then an unknowing, a falling into total surrender to the teacher, then that surrender isn’t to anyone in particular anymore, it becomes inherent.

In the beginning you trust the tradition, the lineage of the teacher. But don’t let the fact that the tradition is no longer suitable to the times, or followers of the teaching have misinterpreted the true meaning and passed it down, get in the way of your surrender. The truth of the teaching is eternal. When realization shines through, the tradition is resurrected. Don’t blame the teacher for what happens to his tradition after he drops the body. It’s all right to have more then one teacher or tradition, until you find the one where you can say, oh yes, he is my teacher. It is possible that one teacher may not be able to take you to full realization perhaps because you have bypassed the teacher and you need someone with complete realization. And when you become your own teacher in Self-referral, you will see all those traditions out there as just different ways of saying the same thing suited for different personalities.

Use your free will to surrender. Make that choice. In surrender, once you make that choice, then there is no more free will. Your free will has been surrendered to God or Self. There is no longer a separation between your will and God’s will. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In self-realization, heaven and earth become one. The will of God becomes our will merged as Self.

You might be thinking. It’s not that easy just to surrender. I need a method. That may be true. Due to bad habit of mind and stress in the body, a method may be required to retrain the mind from bad habits to a good habit and to allow the stress to more easily be released. However, the method itself can become a habit. In the end all methods must be put aside. If you are innocent and free of stress, you don’t need a method. Surrender becomes natural and effortless. When you have crossed the river, you no longer need the boat. Then you will begin to tell everyone. I have always been here. There’s no place to go, nothing to search for, or strive for. You are your destination.