The Need for Surrender

There were four Yoga paths identified as “true paths” (Patanjali is the earliest I’ve seen, but he was quoting something or someone so it must predate him) in original Hindu philosophy. They are:

Jnana – the path of wisdom or knowledge

Raja - the path of self-discipline and practice (usually through meditation)

Karma – the path of service through selfless action

Bhakti – the path of devotion (to God, Guru, or Self)

And there is one important quality involved in all four practices and that is surrender. What are we surrendering when we follow any of these paths? We are surrendering our mind’s definitions of reality.

When our minds contradict the path we use the path as the authority over the mind.

We find a clear knowable truth on the Jnana path and our minds disagree? The truth is the authority.

We hear our minds say that they don’t want to practice today on the Raja path? The practice is the authority over our minds.

We don’t feel like being in service today on the Karma Yoga path? The act of service through selfless action is the authority over our desire against it.

We want to follow our own beliefs, desires, and survival strategies on the Bhakti path? God, our Guru, or our True Self is the authority over our fears and beliefs.

And without complete surrender these paths are useless. It does not need to be only ONE of these paths, in fact, all four practiced at once is the speediest path, but the only way this works is if the mind is WRONG when it bumps into these paths, or if you prefer, if there is no surrender – there is no path.

What was my breaking point as a spiritual student? Suffering helped a lot, but also so did surrender to truth. I, due to my nature, was on the Jnana path. And on that path, I could hold the mysticism and metaphors (often the only means available to spiritual teachers to point to the truth that is ultimately beyond words) at bay with rational arguments. And I used these arguments to maintain my own little mind bubble - the bubble built upon my childhood survival strategies that created my ego and Pain Body.

However, science was an authority I had already surrendered to as it had already blown up many of my mind’s assumptions to date. And I clung to it as a means of swatting away the “fluffy” mystical points usually used as metaphors in spiritual teachings. And then Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke. Well, live and die by the sword, if science is true, and her scientific descriptions of her “stroke of insight” were accurate then that authority stood against my defiance. If what she said was true I had no shield left. So I surrendered and finally “did the work” my teacher had been suggesting for years and years.

An interesting thing happens once we surrender on this path; in time we find that the “fluffy” metaphors were indeed pointing to truths. Even the bible made sense to this old hard and true atheist after I “did the work.”

But thank the Goddess I had surrender already in my playbook. Science had kicked my mind’s butt so many times that I grew used to surrendering my beliefs over to it and that practice of surrender worked well once I began the path by doing the work.

But what of people who have no surrender in their lives? What of people to whom facts do not matter in the relative or the absolute?

Well, they are trapped in their minds until suffering shows them the exit. And often, even then, for years and years afterward as their minds find anything other than itself to blame for the suffering. The absence of surrender, or the giving of that surrender to parents and the culture and their survival strategies and evaluations years prior without a fight, is now trapping them in a hell that often leads to pain so deep that suicide seems to be the only escape.

So, if one decides to follow a “spiritual path” and has not surrendered fully over to it, the path will not dent the mind. And in time the mind will even blame the path for the failure as we “guru shop” and look for other authorities we won’t surrender to.

Pick a path.

Surrender fully.

And see what happens.

Without the surrender, nothing will happen.