Surrender is key to finding God-realization—we hear the words, we receive the teachings, yet life hits us where it hurts and we find ourselves caught in the web of conflicting reactions—love and hate, attraction and repulsion, like and dislike, plans made and plans frustrated. We think we are prepared to surrender, but, “Oh no, not that!”
On top of life seeming to go after the very things we want to protect, there is also the complication of knowing exactly what surrender means. In modern vocabulary surrender oftentimes means giving in, throwing in the towel, giving up in defeat. When we look at the lives of great spiritual masters and saints we see that this is obviously not what is meant, for these unstoppable personalities fight remarkable battles on the human front—persevering when the world stands against them, giving their lives in ceaseless activity and in some instances literally. There is no hint of becoming flaccid when it comes to standing up for truth, virtue and God.
This surrender is not giving in to the world, the body or desire nature, rather it is total abandonment to God’s will. Anyone who has lived much of a life can look back and see many “lifetimes” within this one life–various stages where life takes radical changes and turns us in completely new directions from the way we had been going. This can be particularly true of one surrendered to the will of God. While there is no template that God-realized souls follow, many times each one found their lives following a very different course from their assumed natural trajectory. Lahiri Mahasaya met Babaji, and the great Master was directed back into family life and career when all he wanted to do was to stay with his beloved guru. Papa Ramdas was married with a young daughter, and his direction from God took him into a wandering sannyasa life without any outer support but God alone. Both these great masters had to completely surrender all their ideas of what they thought they wanted, or should do, to the will of God’s direction.
I look back over my life and I see how many times that if I had listened better, surrendered completely at the time, how much suffering and misdirection I would have been saved. On the other hand, I also look at when beyond everything I wanted, or thought I should do, I surrendered heart, mind and soul to God and Gurus, and how I, and others, were ultimately benefited. There have been times when what God directed was not met with approval by those around me, and these have been most difficult for me. Other points of surrender are when my life took turns that were surprising and unwanted, and I did not surrender to illness, lack of prosperity, frustrated attempts to meet goals, or the myriad other problems life presented. But, I did surrender to the fact that it was God who was orchestrating these events, to seeing His hand in it all, and I surrendered to His direction in how I must respond to them.
When God directed me to leave my profession, which after many years of work had put me in a desirable position, and to throw my lot in with Him without any notion of how that would be, I did not hesitate to make the jump. When He directed me to take a year in silence and solitude, and I simply knew it was His direction, I set about doing this task though I had never in my life spent even a single day with the object of keeping mum. In these recent years He has directed me in this rather nomadic life, beyond my expectations of what I “should” be doing. I have followed Him implicitly, knowing that His will is automatically for the highest good of all. I know His hand has been the guiding force in these large trends of my life.
Then there is day-to-day life, so many micro-moments that are times of surrender. When the body has aches and pains and does not behave the way it should, when frustrations come up in the day, things do not go as planned, and God prompts me to do one thing when my mind thinks it should be doing something else—all of these are pin-points of surrender. By themselves, none are absolutely life-changing, however when taken as a pattern of surrender to God, these micro-moments most definitely make or break a spiritual life. Any one of these day-to-day moments may trigger fear, resentment, anger, desire nature—any one of them can veer me off track from my sadhana-spiritual practice. Spiritual life is surrender in both the big events and the little—one strengthening the other. Some master the big decisions, but fail in the micro-moments; others do well in the day-to-day, but get tripped up by some radical change God directs. It must be all—big, little, and everything in between.
And when you are surrendered? You experience an alignment with God that transcends the events of this world; it gives you direction that is true and leads you to liberation—you know when to act, when to fight for what is true, and when to observe events unfolding. In this alignment you experience peace, an inner assurance that God is guiding you in the myriad events of your life. You know there are no accidents in life—all situations are helping to liberate you from the tyranny of attachments. Enacting a life of surrender to God inevitably leads you to complete union with Him, your eternal savior and liberator from ignorance, and you discover the truth of who and what you truly are.