The 6 Promises of Surrender
The Sharanam offers us 6 promises.
The promise of security if we give up our need for external security.
The promise of fulfillment if we stop looking for satisfaction outside.
The promise of Life’s power if we come into service of It rather than ourselves.
The promise of love if we relinquish our attachment.
The promise of wisdom if we relinquish our knowledge.
The promise of unity if we give up our idea of separation.
I’m sure we could read about
these 6 promises in lots of books.
But to understand that they are literally promises.
It’s not woo woo.
It’s not ‘well sometimes it works’.
It’s not ‘maybe’.
It is absolute.
Life does not break its laws.
It never breaks its promise to itself.
I say this because it calls us
deeper into that promise.
Because we can do this
whimsically with the mind.
We say — “yeah, I’m trying to get that”
Or we can realise
“Wow, it’s Life’s promise.
And if I do this, wholesale —
the entire trajectory,
the flavour,
the lived experience within me
is transformed.”
It's amazing.
Your whole Life will be completely transformed.
It will never be the same again.
It is an amazing promise from the divine,
but it says:
“You have to surrender to Me”
That’s the core of it.
Yes — surrender
is at the core of all spiritual activity.
The very basis of spiritual life,
the epicentre of our transformation
as human beings.
Let go.
Life can do this better than you
by a country mile —
and more.
Way better.
We can’t even get close.
So the yogis are calling from beyond:
Let go!
It’s frickin’ awesome!
Just keep going!
And you know it’s true.
Because your life is becoming something else.
You’ve started this let-go process.
You’re surrendering more.
You worry a little less.
You see anxiety and go,
“Ah, I’ll do faith instead.”
You’re growing in power —
but it’s a different kind of power.
You’re relinquishing your power over Life
so Life’s power can rise up in you.
Power up from, not power over.
You can’t have the one
if you’re exerting the other.
Power over is depression,
a suppression.
It’s the effort to control,
to hold the lid on the box.
We are so frightened at what will happen if we lift that lid.
Life is going to happen.
Ready?
Because nobody can hold it forever.
It’s futile.
It’s wonderful.
It wants to rise up.
It raises you up —
and everyone with you.
That’s why the third Sharanam
is so crucial.
Power over — or service of the great power.
You can’t do anything with the power
it’s not your power.
But you can take the lid off the box.
It is an action of liberation.
Maybe it's all too much at first.
So we partake in the great pulse,
of relinquishing our control.
Then more and more we see the glory
More and more we come into trust.
“Let me be in service of That”
I feel, at the end of the season,
We can just really go for that.
We can do this loosely
or we can do this for real.
Really recognising that this power is for real.
Its an eternal promise from Life itself
and our nervous systems are locked into that.
It is either locked down
or it is liberated
A new pipeline opens,
through which Life can fully express itself,
all through those six sharanams.
It is your design.
And you cannot be satisfied until you fulfill that design.
It is all there in those six beautiful let go’s.
It all boils down to surrender.
Surrender,
is the last of the yamas and niyamas
the final say,
the trump card,
the one and only
within the other nine —
Ishvara Pranidhana.
Ishvara.
That was Patanjali’s term
for the supreme reality.
And Pranidhana
means surrender to That.
Surrender your life to Life
Surrender your life to God
Surrender your personality back into Presence.
Surrender your control to the Great Power
Surrender your need to be secure to the Great Support
Surrender your personal desire into the greater desire of Life
Surrender your need to be validated into praise of the Great Power
Surrender your attachment into Love.
Surrender your need to be smart into Wisdom.
The thing is —
when we gather and talk about these things
I can see it in you.
You’re feeling it.
I don’t feel that anyone comes here
who doesn’t feel the call to Ishvara Pranidhana.
We create space so we can each feel the call in ourselves.
You can feel it now inside yourself.
While you’re feeling that call,
the whole time it is there inside you
it is happening.
Satsang is about creating space
for this inherent power
of supreme intelligence
to start to percolate your fibers —
to start moving through you.
And while you’re here with me,
with such attention,
such aliveness —
you’re feeling into what
a surrendered life means
it is happening.
After this session,
you cannot be the same again.
I love that so much.
Everyone leaves here different
from how they came in —
they are transformed.
Because you’ve let the possibility of a surrendered life
enter your system.
Your system is starting to long for it.
But there’s a dialogue going on behind it
in the psychological structure, isn’t there?
That voice says,
“Alright, that’s fine for the weekend,
I can take this in a bit —
but come Monday morning?”
We wonder —
is that great power,
that deeper presence,
Really going to live my existence on my behalf?
Can I truly relax back,
surrender,
give up the effort?
Is it enough
to be here — open, conscious, participating?
Is that really all that Life asks of me?
To relax back,
be present and conscious,
and allow what’s inside
to come through?
Meanwhile the psychology prays for mercy:
What about me?
As we watch our own reactions,
we watch our own pride dissolve
until we realise…
We don’t have to do anything at all.
Life is doing it all.
It’s doing it in the trees,
in the sun,
everywhere you look — except for in us?
Why would Life
be able to do it with all of that,
and not with you?
Is that possible?
That you’re the one anomaly?
But it won’t sustain
your idea of your life.
That’s what we struggle with.
If we don’t fixate around desire;
It simply desires to live through us.
I’m here, conscious.
My body moves — look, I’m washing up.
Just like before.
Only now, it’s not me controlling it.
Everything still gets done.
But it’s coming from the Heart.
But what if Life
has a different plan for me
than I have for me?
Because I really want it this way.
I really want my life to look this way.
We fear
that Life won’t take care of that —
that it will give us
a lesser expression
than the one we’ve worked so hard to build.
“I’ve been slaving at this for 52 years,”
we say,
“trying to create this.
I know it’s not working —
but give me more time!”
Eighty-nine.
That’s it.
The best we can do.
Dying,
tense.
Have a look at it if you want.
See what you fear that Life can do?
“I’ll tell you what —
you can have fifty percent.
There you go.
Do it like that — do the truth thing.
But this fifty percent,
I’ve got my plan, yeah?
It’s a good plan.
Ten years ahead.
Twenty, maybe.”
Now — I can say this from my heart:
there is absolutely no way
that Life doesn’t have a superior plan to yours.
That it isn’t aiming higher in you
than you could ever aim for yourself.
There is no way that Life doesn’t have a more expansive, unlimited,
incomprehensibly magnificent vision of your life —
than you could possibly work out at night before you go to sleep.
Life is calling to us:
“Let me have you.
I love you so much.
I want to make everything that is possible in your cells come to life.”
It won’t take away what you need.
It won’t even take your desires way.
It’ll expand them.
It’ll make everything larger,
more luminous.
They might change, sure —
but the desire to open,
to explore,
will continue.
Destinations might shift,
but the essence remains.
You won’t lose the ones you love.
The love will simply expand around them.
That’s surrender.
All we’re doing
is releasing the tight grip of limitation
around our existence —
so it can open.
As you begin to understand surrender like this,
it starts to work on the one
that feels surrender is the enemy.
Because that’s what the ego believes —
that Life threatens its existence,
rather than expanding it.
This is meditation.
Contemplating this is meditation.
But you’ll have to recreate it
for yourself.
What is this surrender?
What does it mean?
The idea with sadhana —
is to make it self-evident,
to prove it works.
For a dedicated amount of time
you hand your body over to Life
you hand it over to the breath.
I’m going to let it pulse in the body
And trust it to do its thing.
Life is intelligent enough
to do the right thing with your life.
You’ll participate.
But you’re not the doer —
you’re following the breath.
Does it take me
in the right direction?
Does it improve my existence?
Does it heal me?
Does it break down tension?
Does it move through obstacles
without creating new ones?
Is it loving, kind, compassionate?
These are the things
we fear it’s not,
if we lift the lid off the box.
At the end of the practice,
ask —
is it true that Life absolutely
takes care of you in entirety?
Way better
than if you were in charge.
And what if
it takes a little longer
to turn into something
a lot better?
Is that alright with you?
Does it take you astray?
Or do you sometimes
take yourself astray?
Sometimes we pop up,
interfere,
try to influence
something unfolding
rather beautifully.
And then I notice —
oh, look at me.
The big doer.
The influencer.
The one who still needs
to be thinking, doing, managing.
Ah — I surrender you.
Back into presence.
How wonderful
to have the chance
to see you appear.
Isn’t it so?
This is the alternative to whipping yourself spiritually
for being like this or that.
Instead thank it —
for showing itself..
Swadhyaya precedes Ishvara Prandihana.
We get to see more of what we could do with surrendering
because it is no longer serving us.
We will see so much
but that is wonderful.
We burn when we see things.
Then we surrender the burn.
As with all the yamas and niyanas
You can do this
because you have something to surrender into.
It only becomes real
when you have this presence alive in you.
You know it.
So you surrender into it.
If you didn't have anything to surrender into
You’d be trying to do the surrender in the mind only.
You know how hopeless that affair is.
It only becomes effective when the presence is known in us.
The more you have faith in That the more you can surrender.
Day to day, things come up.
You start to worry.
You start to stress.
That’s the signal.
You’re beginning to come into wisdom —
you’re realising,
Stress.
Anxiety.
“It’s not going my way.”
Now that’s wisdom dawning, isn’t it?
Because you see —
you were trying to control
the uncontrollable.
So what do you need to do
to surrender.
You know how it feels.
It is an actual physiological event.
A felt decompression of the body.
And that anxiety goes into the great pool of spirit inside of you
and It converts it.
It wants it all back where it belongs.
Sometimes you will have to go and look at it.
You examine it.
“Oh, it’s you again.
You’ve been controlling my existence,
limiting it —
let me see what you are.
And then — how do you exist?”
Because those deep patterns
feel like they are you.
But now, you’ve managed to separate.
You can look.
And while it’s being looked at,
it’s already being shown.
It starts to crumble,
starts to release.
Give it a little time,
and you say —
“Ah… now I get it.”
You’ll feel a click.
A shift.
That this is alive in you,
is pure wonder.
If you could wish one thing for every being —
would it be for a thing,
a job,
the fulfillment of their personal desires
or for contact with this presence?
Because once you’ve touched it,
you start wishing it
for all beings.
Not aggressively —
everyone comes in their own way,
in their own time.
But quietly,
a wish begins to move through you.
A prayer with or without words—
that all beings
may know this same peace.
People come to that presence in their own time
sometimes through misery,
through suffering,
through ordeal —
but it’s still grace.
You start wishing it for yourself,
then for all beings,
and it becomes recognised —
what’s already here.
Thank you.
So we complete the yamas and niyamas.
We’ve got about two weeks of the season left
to work their nuances together.
Namaste.
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