Surrender - part 2

A bunch of meditation teachers made a recording recently of what their experience of surrendering everything - every thought, feeling and action - to the Stillness was like. For me it was amazing. It reminded me on so many different levels of playing with surrender myself.

I hadn't realised it, but there was a subtle effort to secure an experience I thought I wanted. I know the silence well, but there was a lack of contentment in that experience. There was expectation that somehow, sometime (hopefully soon!), my experience was going to change, get bigger, get more profound. This was frustrating because the experience I was having in any given moment rarely met with expectation.

Instead, it's amazing the difference in allowing the silence to be exactly as it is right now. To simply rest in whatever is there. Instantly my experience of stillness and of life became so soft and embracing. There is an immediate quiet joy and gratitude for my experience and for my life. I love it.

It's also so much more obvious to me now how surrender is one big game of seeing how innocently I can approach every moment. To see the mind setting up expectations and play with simply ignoring them.

I feel so grateful for the ease of this. As opposed to rigidly trying to be still, relaxing and allowing the stillness to be is so much easier and graceful. So much better than forcing and controlling.

I love it!

Inspired

Have you ever heard a thing and only later understood it, realised it?

I don't know how many times someone has said to me something like:

"Don't do anything, just rest in the silence now. Be completely present and aware of what this moment has for you now. Remain content in your experience as it is, without judgement, without wanting to change or it to be anything else than it is, right now."

The amount of times something similar has gone through my eyes or ears and always running was this idea that even to rest I had to do something. I couldn't sit back in the comfy sofa of awareness because there was something more. It was this Noble Thought - I want everything, and what I am experiencing right now is only a taster so I'll try a little harder, be a little more one pointed, be a better student.

It's so funny because its the littlest thing that kept me from resting, from experiencing what there is in this moment, from being free to be all that presence.

So there is just the experience of stillness. Everything still comes and goes but there is this central core, untouched by any of it. I love the saying "like paint being thrown through air". Just like that. It's just what I choose to make it.

Wonderful, simple, so simple and such fun, captivating...

Dropping Keys

The small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows
while the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys
all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.

~ Hafiz

I stole this from Moni Vangolen and Tomas Stubb's website. They are wonderful, still and inspiring teachers. If you are ever near them, seek them out. I feel such a connection with these guys, they are a ton of fun. yay!

Surrender

Surrender to the Source.
Surrender to Awareness, this is the only place of protection.
Surrender your heart and you will know all.
Surrender to Consciousness and Bliss.

Surrender means to surrender your bondage and simply be Freedom.
Surrender is the ego bowing down to its Source.
No more demands or commands, but just putting all in the hands of the Source.
Surrender is to submit your stupidness, your wickedness, to the will of Existence, to Consciousness and Bliss and being happy.
That’s all.

Surrender.
Let Silence have You.

- Sri H.W.L. Poonja

Cultivating the ability is stay still and let whatever happens happen is so important in meditation, and indeed in life. It's incredibly simple but huge in terms of peace and experiencing the maximum of your Self that is there to be experienced. Totally letting go and getting out of the way results in such a joyful invincibility.

It is an act of absolute humility: "I know nothing. I know what I like, I know what is important to me. But I don't know how this universe works, what is best for me, how my greatest desire will unfold for me the smoothest and quickest.”

Absolutely surrendering is finally acknowledging the uselessness of the mind’s ability to give anything that lasts in terms of satisfaction. It allows the Grace of the universe to take over. Where before we would try and work out the best way, by surrendering in this moment we let the infinite wisdom of a power much greater than our puny mortal minds the space and permission to act. By giving up the mind and surrendering in this moment, we disappear. The Source is all that remains.

We’ll always have a choice, and rightly so. I’m not saying let life continue without your input. I’m saying act, but be free of the expectation of the result of action. Be innocent. There’s a huge difference, when we sit down to ascend or meditate, in life, everywhere.

We can make the choice to continue as we always have - trying to figure it out, to protect our interests, to secure our lives and our experience - or we can let go, giving everything including our grasping pride that we know up in exchange for resting back into the stillness of our inner awareness.

Stop fighting, you don't know anything.

It is just like a journey down a river, kicking back, letting the main current take us swiftly and smoothly to the re-cognition of who we really are, versus jumping in and attempting to control our descent by holding onto the side. The only thing that happens is that our journey is not smooth, fast or pleasant: we get pummelled and beaten by the rocks and branches.

The only time this happens to you - getting stuck or having a problem - is when you don’t fully surrender to what is, when you have an expectation or a position. The universe has a wonderful way of showing you all these places. It’s easy to make a half-hearted effort at surrendering. You can even surrender 99%, but that 1% will still get you. You’ll be shown if you’re hanging on in the slightest way. And it's a great thing if you are willing to be shown. There is God, knocking on your door, showing you where you can have more. Awesome. Being humble, being willing not to know, stepping back and letting whatever happens happen is the quickest way to regaining smoothness, peace and connection, and getting more.

So, don’t try and work anything out. Invest all of your attention in the Silence that remains in you when everything else is ignored. Surrender every impulse, every emotion, every great idea back to that. It's the easiest way. Nothing else has worked.

If not Now, when?

Babaji

"Love and serve all humanity.
Assist everyone.
Be happy, be courteous.
Be a dynamo of irrepressible joy.
Recognize God and goodness in every face.
There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future.
Praise everyone. If you cannot praise someone, let them out of your life.
Be original, be inventive.
Be courageous. Take courage again and again.
Do not imitate; be strong, be upright.
Do not lean on the crutches of others.
Think with your own head. Be yourself.
All perfection and every divine virtue are hidden within you. Reveal them to the world.
Wisdom, too, is already within you. Let it shine forth.
Let the Lord's grace set you free.
Let your life be that of the rose; in silence, it speaks the language of fragrance."

Babaji

Stuck

"The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions."

Ellen Glasgow

Perfection

It may seem at times that our search is for perfection, that one day we'll reach a state of ultimate purity and rest, finally fufilled, content, whole, finished. The reality I suspect, at least while we're still human, is of constant evolution, continual discovery of more.

Sure, there will come a time of an continuous experience of contentment and peace and fufillment, but as long as you continue to rest all of your awareness in the source of all, that source will continue to show you places where you can surrender more of yourself to it.

Which is a fantastic thing - a never ending, continually changing experience of being whole, and then even more whole, and then even more whole.

The great thing is that you can stop expecting that final stage, that final aha, because it never existed. You can give up getting it right, getting it perfect. What you are chasing is an idea of perfection based on a memory or a comparison of what you believe Truth to be. That either is gone, never to come again or it never was available to you in the first place.

Perfection is only available to you right now and you have no choice over how it looks.

In the same way you cannot be nearly full or almost there. It's not like that, there is no shallow and deep end to the swimming pool of God. You either are resting in Stillness or not. You're either wet or you're not.

If not Now, when?