Surrender: Love the Grace of Letting Go

Surrender: Love the Grace of Letting Go
by Kambra McConnel

Sat Chit Ananda Guru Ki Jay!

“Once you let go completely—once you surrender completely—everything becomes clear. If it is not clear, then that is because you have not surrendered completely.” – Kedarji

What is Surrender?

As Kedarji utters in Verse #21 of The Verses on Surrender within his sacred text, The Sutras on the 5-Fold Act of Divine Consciousness: “Surrender is abandoning fear, abandoning what we think we know, abandoning what we are attached to, in favor of the Self. Even a little bit of Faith can go a long way in helping us to Surrender to the Truth of our God-nature.”

In Verse #23, Kedarji goes on to say that, “We engage in the discipline of Surrender in order to discard limitations that stand in the way of our experience of God. All of the instruction and practices we are offered in Nityananda Shaktipat Yoga – these are tools for our use to discard limitation and tap into an ego-less state where we can experience what Surrender and this Natural Free State of Being actually is.”

In Verses #8 and #37, Kedarji utters that “To Surrender is to have a quiet mind that is no longer restless and embraces Silence,” and “Surrender is Love. The two cannot be separated.”

Why Surrender?

In my Sadhana (daily spiritual practice under the leadership of a living Master), steadily reaching for these highest understandings reminds me why it is important to Surrender completely.

And then, indeed, everything becomes clear.

The practice of Surrender – engaging the methods instructed in our approach to quiet the restless mind – helps me silence and clear my mind.

And then, I can let go of superimposition, judgement, and fear.

This helps me embrace Grace – to immerse in the Indescribable Joy of the Self, be inspired from within, and experience all interactions with people, places, and things as the same Self also. I can experience and share Love, Peace and Joy, no matter what my situations or circumstances appear to be.

What a Blessing of Grace it is to experience my True Nature – and the True Nature of everyone, everything, everywhere – as God…as the Sameness of the Supreme Self… with Love, Peace, and Joy!

Even in mundane “nature.”

Inspired From Within

Recently, I had the privilege of traveling to the Gulf Coast of Florida – the “Nature Coast” – to spend a winter weekend in nature. I have wanted to see manatees in the wild since I was in fifth grade, after I prepared a project about them for my science class.

When a friend extended an invitation to travel – and I realized it was during the manatees’ annual inland migration into warm, spring-fed tributary rivers to survive the cold winter months – I enthusiastically said “Yes! And I love manatees. Let’s go see them!”

So, I put forth my best self-effort to find an area where we could experience solitude in nature with manatees. At first, it seemed like manatee sightings were only guaranteed in very touristy areas – expensive, crowded, and commercialized.

In my mundane search for Love, Peace and Joy, I felt a heightened spiritual witnessing awareness that I needed to Surrender the false notion that I could find any of these states outside of myself.

So, I turned inward to practice Surrendering my restless mind, especially by sitting for meditation each day, performing japa (mantra repetition), and keeping the mantra going while listening to recordings of sacred chants.

Then, I experienced the Love, Peace and Joy of my True Nature. And I felt inspired to approach my self-effort of trip-planning as selfless service, instead of as a means to an end – because as Kedarji utters, after the receipt of Shaktipat, nothing exists that is outside of my Sadhana.

And ultimately, everything became clear.

Journey to the Self

While planning and traveling, I contemplated how every activity served as a perfect reflection of my Sadhana – specifically, the importance of practicing Surrender – and how letting go allows Grace to flow, so that I can instantly Journey to the Self, no matter where I mundanely travel.

For example, we found a wonderful place to stay, near a hidden gem – a quiet river, immersed in nature, unspoiled by development – where many “locals” go.

For me, this reflected how engaging my Spiritual Power and Surrendering to the mantra – letting go of my attachment to “love” and a “need” to see “all” of the manatees, and letting go of my superimposition that there was “only one good place” to find them – gave me the experience of an Improved Mental State. Because when I performed japa as I studied where to travel, my restless mind quieted.

I felt Emotional Resilience as I maintained a one-pointed focus, inner Peace and Content.

And instead of allowing stress to intensify and erode my Vibrant Health, I felt more relaxed during my online research.

I let go of attachments to expectations about outcomes regarding where we “should” go to have the “best” time. As a result, I could discern “hidden gems.”

Also, by my Guru’s Grace, I found a qualified kayaking group with an expert guide who led us on a private tour of the river. For me, this reflected the importance of having an authentic spiritual leader who instructs me on how to Surrender useless qualities such as superimposition, judgement and fear, and how to embrace the Grace of spontaneity while going with the flow.

At first, I felt so attached to the notion of seeing manatees “throughout the tour” that the energy of my mind subtly contracted into “tunnel vision.” So, by my Guru’s Grace, when we saw a wild otter right away instead of manatees,  my ego idea blazed and my restless mind contracted with disappointment.

But then, the tour guide expressed great enthusiasm about the otter, which revealed for me what a privilege we were experiencing. “Otters rarely come out around people,” he said. “Yet this one is swimming alongside us!”

Inwardly, I took three deep breaths, repeated my mantra, and recalled the form of my Guru to silence my restless mind. By practicing Surrender, I clearly observed my tendency to subtly judge other wildlife as less worthy of my attention than manatees.

I had been missing the forest for the trees, with my tendencies to attach to what I perceived as exciting, and to avoid what I perceived as less interesting, by superimposing false notions based on no direct experience.

Similarly, when the tour guide shared knowledge about alligators based on his direct experiences with them, I instantly felt awe, which shocked my restless mind into silence. Then, the coast was clear for inspiration and Joy to well up within me.

With heightened spiritual witnessing awareness, I remembered to Surrender fear and judgement – to let go and reach for higher, more useful understandings that bring me closer to God, and allow me to experience everyone and everything as the same Self also.

Instead of remaining stuck in judging alligators based on fear and the false notion that they “always” aggressively pursue and injure people, through our guide’s mundane leadership, the leadership of my Guru’s Grace revealed my tendency to conceal the Indescribable Joy of the Self.

Specifically, I observed how my act of concealment had led me to react to a superimposition steeped in fear, rather than appreciating the privilege of passively observing an alligator who was resting, unprovoked, and displaying no fear of me.

What Grace!

Complete Clarity

Eventually, our guide led us to a place in the river where manatees gather to eat, sleep, and float. Upon seeing them, in awe, my restless mind was shocked into silence. I felt Love, Peace, and Joy well up inside of me.

After the tour, by my Guru’s Grace and the Grace of my self-effort to Surrender, the more time we spent with the manatees, the more I experienced an inner state of unwavering Content.

With heightened spiritual awareness, I subtly observed that I did not feel overwhelming excitement when I saw them, or disappointment when “all” of the manatees did not immediately “race” over to “greet” me.

Instead, I inwardly felt inspired to let go, and to go with the flow.

Later, with great Joy, my friend shared a photo of me in my kayak, surrounded by manatees. I had Surrendered so completely in that moment that I had stopped counting how many I saw and simply immersed in Love.

By letting go of attachment, I experienced what the Natural Free State of Being actually is: Love for my true God-nature as the Self, and Love for everyone and everything as the same Self also.

And I felt a heightened spiritual witnessing awareness of how the photo served as a perfect reflection for the importance of authentic spiritual leadership – an “outside agent” – in Sadhana: my Guru, whose Grace always shows me where I think I am at, and where I am really at, with respect to spiritual attainment.

So much Grace in Surrender.

So much Love in Letting Go.

 Om Guru Om

Kambra McConnel is the Treasurer of The Bhakta School of Transformation. She sits on our Board of Directors and also volunteers as a certified staff teacher and program leader for Nityananda Shaktipat Yoga.