Practicing Surrender
by Swami Sivananda Radha
 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 about surrender by some Indians in Montreal who invited me to dance for
them to celebrate their independence from Britain. I asked them what it means to
have a Guru, and what the next step is once you have found him or her. I was
told that I would be well-advised to prepare myself first of all by writing down
all my shortcomings -- and 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.
She said, "Oh, Mrs. Hellman. You
wouldn't be interested. They are only folk dances."
I said, "That doesn't matter. I would
like to learn them."
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.
In surrendering, obedience is an absolute
must. If you don't practice obedience, you will never follow instructions
correctly. If you do a practice incorrectly, saying, "Oh, this is more
comfortable, I like it this way better," you will never have the result of
the practice. Often people say, "I have done this for five years and I
haven't got anywhere." When I ask them to show me what they are doing, I
can always see that they have made changes to the instructions.
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. Until I had my first bout with arthritis, I accepted whatever was
offered. If somebody gave me a bed, it was great. If it was 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," or "I won't go there any more
because I will get a lumpy 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. One person will give you a chest of
drawers, another will just let you live out of your suitcase. Whatever comes,
you adjust -- wherever you are.
Use any such travels to surrender to what is.
Don't say, "I don't like this table. Can I take it out?" Don't change
the room around because you like it better a different way, even if you are
going to be there for a month. In other words, subdue all thoughts that you have
about making immediate changes. That's very important. The only exception is a
change that serves your spiritual practice. Then ask if you can make the change
you want. Or learn to adjust your practice to whatever the circumstances 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.
To practice surrender, I would sometimes
promise the Divine that for a particular length of time I would do anything a
certain person wanted me to do. Then for a time before beginning the practice, I
would put that person into the Light. I have prepared people this way for a week
before beginning, and sometimes up to three weeks if they were really difficult.
I always made it clear in my preparation period that I would not go against my
conscience, but anything else I would go along with.
One time, when I was doing all the
housekeeping at the Ashram, I was practicing this surrender with a fellow who
had a workbench in the basement where he sawed wood. We had forced air heating
with big ducts. He reached up and rubbed his hand over one, and he said,
"Look at that. You call that clean?" Well, it had never occurred to me
that it was my duty to clean his workshop, but I had said I would do anything,
so I cleaned it.
At one time that promise to surrender to
someone cost me two thousand dollars. I had to decide whether to follow my
decision to surrender or save the money. I said, "This is probably a very
special test. How far will I go? Will that include money, too?" So I let
the two thousand dollars go out of the window. That was a tremendous amount of
money in those days, when I was getting only fifty dollars for a lecture. I had
to give many lectures before I got that amount together again.
In doing this practice, you don't sacrifice
your ideals, you don't go against your conscience. But you sacrifice whatever
else you have to sacrifice, and one day the time will come when most of your
surrender is no longer a sacrifice.
I became aware, also, that unless I surrender
my habitual thinking, the habitual quick response in my mind -- in other words,
my own mental activity -- I can't really hear what anybody is telling me. In any
human relationship (not only in marriage), if you want to hear somebody, you
have to surrender at that moment and really listen to that person. If you
practice that, thinking each time, "That was another little opportunity to
be better able to listen to the still, small voice within, to listen to the
Divine," then surrender becomes second nature and you don't have to make a
conscious effort. When surrender has become part of your nature, you will no
longer have to say to yourself, for example, "At fiveo'clock
Jane will come to talk to me and I had better surrender so I will hear what she
says."
At times, if something comes out of the blue
or somebody drops in unexpectedly while I am busy, I may not hear what is being
said. As soon as I become aware of that, I say, "Repeat that, please. What
was it?" At that moment, then, I drop everything else. Now this means I can
forget a hundred and fifty other things, but this is what must be done.
Sometimes my place is like an airport with
all the people coming and going. But I have made it that way on purpose because
surrender means not saying, "I open the doors from three to five only, and
if you don't make it, that's too bad. "You have to surrender to the Divine
twenty four hours a day. You cannot do it part time.
How do you do a spiritual practice if you
keep all your doors open and somebody walks right in? Well, you have to learn to
incorporate that person, that conversation, into the practice of surrender, even
if you had intended to do something entirely different. And don't get irritable,
don't get impatient -- particularly if the interruption isn't all that important
and the work you were involved in is important.
This practice teaches you to surrender, to be
quick in adjusting your concentration, to be able to go back to where you were
quickly, and it deepens your acceptance of what is.
When that is well established, then you can
say, "Okay, between seven and nine -- that's my time." But still be
willing to surrender to circumstances and adjust your time. If you don't,
impatience comes in the door. You will begin thinking, "Oh, I can never
finish anything. There are all these disturbances. There are all these
interruptions." That impatience reflects later on in other areas of your
spiritual practices and your daily life.
For me, all these things were particularly
difficult, not having grown up in a large family and having no brothers and
sisters. To me, people meant problems, and who wants problems? However, I made
up my mind I would do it, never mind what it was, and there's no question that I
had my hard times. But victory comes only if you allow it to happen.
Explain the idea of surrender to yourself in
many ways. When you light a candle, you can see that the candle has to surrender
to your action and to the flame. It has to burn down. It can't say, "No, I
don't want to." Ask yourself, "What am I surrendering to?" If you
are surrendering to the Light, make sure it's the Divine Light, not some colored
or black light.
People who live in the Ashram may think at
times they are surrendering to me, or to the Ashram, or its policies and
regulations, but really the Ashram is only the battlefield on which they battle
their own problems and difficulties. It is here only to provide them with the
opportunity to practice surrender. If it becomes really tough, I tell people,
"Ask the Divine for a breathing spell, but don't be foolish and pack and
go. There is no great lesson in packing and going. Anybody can do that. If
you feel like doing that, acknowledge those
feelings. Don't hide them in the closet. Don't make ghosts out of them. But
don't act on them."
When it comes to surrender, there is often
less struggle for a woman than there is for a man. I did not have many of the
struggles that a man undergoes, particularly if he has made a name for himself.
Men go through life always with the undercurrent in their mind, "I am
superior. I can do this, and I can do that, and I can do the other." Unless a
man has developed the feminine part in himself, he feels very superior to any
woman because he has greater physical strength and he is usually physically
taller.
If you are a woman and you feel badly about
your position, think also of the advantages you have on the spiritual path. To
surrender to the Divine is, from my experience with what I have seen of the
struggle of men, considerably easier for a woman. A woman doesn't usually need
to nourish intellectual pride. If she feels like crying, she cries. A man too
often feels, "No. Men don't do this," or "That is beneath my male
dignity."
Women don't have that problem. But a woman
must be careful to surrender to the Divine and not to the desires of her
feminine nature. Look at all your desires. Don't surrender to them. Don't scheme
the fulfillment of those desires.
You will go through phases in your efforts at
selfless service, but the important thing is to do it. The quality of your work
and the quality of your attitude will improve if your dedication is complete.
Why is surrender essential? Because you can't
always know when your self-will is active. There may be just a tinge of greed or
desire in your attitude to the work -- and just a tinge is too much. Let go and
say, "Well, I will wait and work, and when the time comes the answer will be
given." You will see that it will be given.
Every now and then review how you are doing
with surrender and obedience. Put a list on the inside cover of your diary and
tick it off. When you come to the bottom of the list, put up a new list and
start all over again, because it is so very easy to slip up. You have to keep
your mind on the many things that have to be incorporated into your spiritual
practice.
Self-will and work done selfishly keep you in
bondage. The biggest enemy of your
spiritual development is stubborn resistance and self will. The Buddhists have
given perhaps the most detailed description of how to control the mind, and it
is
mainly control of self-will. You have to keep asking the questions: "What
am I doing with this life? Am I really making the best use of it?" Those
are the questions everyone has to ask himself or herself. No teacher can do more
than present you with them and advise you how to apply them. These questions
have to be ingrained, they have to become part of you so that you can help
yourself. A teacher can give you the opportunity, but what you do with the
opportunity is up to you. As a teacher, I can stimulate, coax, and sometimes
give you a little shove, but you have to do the walking. I cannot just pick you
up like a stone and fling you into the lake. That wouldn't work.
So, let go of self-will. Work done selflessly
in the service of the Most High -- and that Most High is also in part within
yourself -- -- is what will get you to your destination. Selfless service will bring
you into contact with that Guru within and that will make you independent.
Selfless service is also your protection in
these times when the obstacles to Higher Consciousness can have a devastating
dimension. Krishna in his last message to the world says, "Whenever people
suffer at the hands of others, I will destroy evil." To the evildoers, he
says, "lf you remain hard-hearted, I will destroy you." Today there
are millions of people suffering at the hands of others. How do you protect
yourself in such times? By practicing selfless service, for that is what will
make you divine. It is the road to return to the Light, to your inner being.
This
article was excerpted from:
 Time To Be Holy
by Swami Sivananda Radha.
Excerpted with permission. ©1996. Published by Timeless Books.
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About The
Author
Swami
Sivananda Radha was the first Western woman to be
initiated into sanyas. Her
numerous books have been
published in several languages. Workshops
and classes based on Swami Radha's teachings
are available at
Yasodhara Ashram and at
affiliated centers called Radha Houses
located in urban communities
internationally. For
further information (including details about
a vacation and yoga retreat center in Merida,
Mexico) write: The Program Secretary,
Yasodhara Ashram, PO Box 9, Kootenay Bay,
BC, Canada, V0B 1X0, phone 1-800-661-8711.
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