Stealing Everything
Sunday, September 3rd, 2006Sri Anandamayi Ma told Mahatma Gandhi:
I shall steal everything belonging to you.
His response?
Such a theft is a rare fortune.
This is the spontaneous wisdom of a true disciple.
Practitioners often find it difficult to cultivate surrender. Most of us really have no idea what surrender means. Even if we are trying sincerely, we are like prisoners attempting to feel our way to freedom through a dark hallway.
Our conception of surrendering to Guru is often focused on Guru as a person at whose feet we must somehow force ourselves to lie. It’s good for us, we hope, but we don’t like it!
We can ascertain if this is our attitude by examining our own mental machinations. Someone who views surrender as a difficult act of submission to the will of an ordinary person will obsess about the “acceptable” and “unacceptable” qualities of the Guru, trying to decide if he or she is “worth it.”
Holding this unfortunate attitude, there will always be too much in the “negative” column. There will never be real surrender via this method.
At the other end of the spectrum is the wannabe Bhakta who is continually over-dramatizing the act of surrender, continually “dissolving in bliss” at the feet of the Guru. This person is addicted to a different kind of projection, but the result is the same: no real surrender.
How can you tell if this is your situation? You are always, only, at the feet of your Guru. It’s all about you and the Guru, and maybe the Guru’s other disciples who are your prime audience. No one else really matters. You can be dissolving in bliss in one moment and cruel to a friend or a stranger in the next moment. This is not real bhakti; it is just another form of limitation.
True surrender is not surrender to an ordinary person, or to a person idealized.
And it is not not surrender to a person.
Don’t you hate that sort of talk?
As they like to say in India, “I am helpless.” Our real situation is hard to express in ordinary, commonsense language precisely because ordinary, commonsense language does not describe all of our real situation.
True surrender is surrender to the entire life process. Surrender is relaxation into the life process. We relax and allow our limited sense of self to be “stolen.” We are no longer guided by “my decision,” “my plan,” “what I think is…” We are guided by our total situation.
This is what is at stake when we begin with surrender to our teacher. Are we going to remain stuck in our tense, contracted, willful, effortful, and extremely limited vision? Or are we going to participate in Reality in all of its fullness?
The Guru is a gateway. Guru is a form of life through which the fortunate among us come to recognize the totality of the life process as it expresses through a human being.
We recognize our own possibility in our Guru, and we surrender to that. We surrender to our own true nature as it is made visible to us in the person, personality, and infinity of the Guru.
Because we are not yet capable of relaxing, we need a guide. We need a person guiding us, and we need to know where we are headed.
The most important function of Guru is to show us where we are headed. The Guru stimulates our natural desire for realization by showing us our potential. And then the Guru helps us to discover ourselves, step-by-step.
The situation of Guru-disciple is a recognition and remembrance technology of the life process.
When we begin to consciously surrender to the life process, we slowly discover that it is totally responsive and aware. We start to notice that we are in a communicative situation. Everything is communicating with everything else. We can listen and follow. We can participate. This is the true meaning of surrender.
There is only one, self-aware life process, not 6 billion individual points of awareness with a few extra thrown in if you admit the self-consciousness of certain animals.
When we erroneously believe that little “I” is the center of awareness, we move through the world like ants at a picnic. We drag around our boulders of food and possessions. We huff and puff, trying to get past mysterious, vast obstacles. Eventually, we are swept aside or crushed underfoot by denizens of a world of which we have no knowledge or curiosity. Our world is very, very small; it only includes a fraction of the totality.
When we progress in sadhana and relax our limited self-conception, the larger, responsive and aware totality begins to come into view.
Through the process of surrender to a true Guru, one who shows us our own potential as human beings, we take the first steps toward reclaiming the entire world. But we must allow our limited sense of self to be “stolen” along the way.
How can we find real surrender?
There is no recipe.
However, if you are feeling disappointed or annoyed in this moment, this is good news!
Why? Because everyone naturally longs for surrender, even if we are fighting it every step of the way.
Your disappointment, and even your annoyance, are evidence of the natural desire for surrender. You would like a recipe, even if you are skeptical.
The longing for surrender is the shakti, the power, that pulls us toward realization. We must recognize and cultivate this, even through the narrow vision of skepticism or the fog of manufactured Bhakti.
Recognize that you wish to be stolen, that you wish to have everything taken away, all of your tension, small self concepts, your “commonsense” ideas about things, and even your “Guru concept.”
Recognize your longing for surrender to life, and you are half-way home.
OM Shanti,
Shambhavi
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