The real power is in the Divine within. To attain to this power, one has to surrender self-will, because self-will, like self-love, is very destructive.
Surrender is absolutely necessary if you are to have success on the spiritual path. But surrender has to be done with awareness and discrimination. Otherwise it may be just apathy or indifference. Surrendering doesn’t mean you don’t have to make plans. You do. You must make the best plans you can, and then turn the whole thing over to the Divine. I call this doing my homework—I do my best to look at the situation, then I make one or two or three plans, and then I wait to see what the Divine has to say about all this.
You can begin to learn how to surrender by practicing. I began to practice before I ever went to India to meet my Guru. I was told that I would be well-advised to prepare myself for this meeting first of all by writing down all my shortcomings—be clear about them, admit them quite freely. The next thing needed was obedience. That worried me greatly because, never having had brothers and sisters, I never had to give in the way most people do.
At that time, I was giving classes in Montreal on dancing, creative movement, and photography to make extra money for my trip to India. I had one young dance student who had learned some simple folk dances and I decided to ask her to teach them to me. She was nineteen.
In the lessons she gave me I observed myself and my reactions. She was a young girl, nineteen, and I was forty-four, a middle-aged woman and a professional dancer. I thought, “If I can surrender to how she teaches me—if I can handle this—then I don’t need to worry about surrender once I meet my Guru.”
It was quite an ordeal because she showed a very different nature then—a different tone of voice, a different vocabulary. She even called me stupid. I could see how the Divine used her to bring it home to me that surrender can really be very difficult. But even after that, I had no idea what Gurudev Sivananda was going to ask of me.
To learn surrender you have to look for opportunities to practice. I found opportunities in my travel. Wherever I went—and I have stayed in many houses, in many places—I never made any special requests. I accepted whatever was offered. If somebody gave me a nice bed, that was fine. If it was a lumpy bed—and I have slept in many lumpy beds—I never said, “That was not a good bed.” You accept what is. If it’s good, say thank you. If it’s not that good, still say thank you, because you had a roof over your head, you had a place to sleep. Whatever comes, you adjust—wherever you are.
Practice your surrender in the small things so that you slowly get used to doing it. If you can make a big leap and go to the biggest, the most difficult surrender, so much the better. Then the other small things will easily fall into place.
But do not practice self-inflicted pain to learn surrender. Just accept whatever circumstances come.
By Swami Sivananda Radha
Excerpt from Time to be Holy
Published by Timeless |
